


Down a different path

by Dragonsteamfan



Category: V (1983), V - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Resistance, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 14:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4964791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonsteamfan/pseuds/Dragonsteamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diana was well known for grabbing the nearest body for her experiments.  What if she had chosen a different Visitor to father Robin Maxwell's child?  One that was close at hand, rather than close to Robin?  This story goes AU from the time Robin is captured and taken to the LA Mother ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lieutenant Martin, personal aide to the Science Officer of the Visitor Fleet, walked into Diana's personal lab. "You wanted to see me Diana?" he asked calmly. Science Officer Diana, who wore the disguise of a dark haired Human woman, was seated at the desk on the far side of her lab. Martin knew well before he felt the press of the laser pistol to his head that Diana's current lover was there. He just hadn't expected to be held at gun point. 'Had Diana finally figured out who helped Donovan escape?' he wondered. 

Mike Donovan, a Human camera man and investigative reporter had been caught earlier trying to sneak aboard the Mother ship. Both he and his sound man had been captured. But while his sound man had fallen to Diana's sick scientific curiosity and had lost his life, Martin had helped Donovan to escape.

"Ah Martin, so glad you could join us," Diana smiled. Martin knew that she wouldn't be smiling if she knew just what he'd been up to in opposing the Leader's plans. 'She must be up to something else.' He knew that he wouldn't like it, if only because of the pistol barrel resting against his head, but there was also the fact that he knew Diana.

Diana was one sick bitch as the Humans liked to say. He’d seen more than a few things over the last two years that only the discipline he’d learned from his martial arts teacher had kept him from losing the contents of his stomach over, but the look on her face would have had him sweating if his reptilian physiology had been capable of it. Fortunately Martin had long before learned how to keep outwardly perfectly composed around her, no matter what was happening. 

"I know how difficult your orders from the Leader have been for you personally," Diana continued, oblivious to Martin's discomfort. 

With that single sentence Martin realized what was going on. Diana wanted revenge for Martin's refusal to come to her bed. He would far rather give up sex than sleep with her. She was pissed that she couldn't have him, even though he was her personal aid. She believed that he should have been assisting her in that area as well. It didn't matter to her if he wanted to be her lover or not. To Diana, only her needs and appetites were important.

Martin knew from the way Diana was looking at him that she'd found a way around the Leader's edict that he not breed, even by accident without special permission from the Leader's breeding council. The Leader had imposed strict laws regarding breeding for ordinary people as well. Publicly, it was a measure to reduce their over population problems. In reality, he was actually trying to breed better warriors and had been selecting certain people as special breeders for years. More warriors and fewer civilians made for a much easier population for the Leader to control. 

Diana didn't know why Martin was on the list for special breeders. Martin had eliminated that information from his file as soon as he had found out that he was going to be assigned to the fleet. He didn't want anyone, especially someone as crazy as Diana to find out that he was one of the extremely rare twins to hatch alive.

At that moment however, that was neither here nor there. He had to deal with whatever new scheme Diana had cooked up this time. He watched as she slunk out of her chair and over to him. "Which is why I've done my best to figure out a way for you to, shall we say, relieve the stress he has placed you under. I don't wish to go against his orders of course," she smiled and Martin could see the vindictive pleasure both in her expression and body language. "But I just couldn't stand the thought of you suffering in silence any longer. Follow me."

Knowing that he wasn't about to get out of whatever Diana had planned for him, Martin silently followed. It would do no good to protest. When Diana got into one of these moods it was best to go along with her and take whatever punishment she dished out - because attempting to thwart her was lethal at best. As long as he wasn't being ordered into her bed anymore, he could stand whatever humiliation she had planned for him. 

Diana led him down to one of the nicer security cells. When he saw the dark haired young human girl through the one way security window though, his stomach sank. Diana really wasn't going to do what he thought she was, was she? 

Martin wasn't a prude, although he had projected that image at Diana so as not to be more desirable to her. He had been breed many times by the Leader, in hopes that more twins would hatch. Both he and his brother had become used to performing when ordered, although neither liked it - but this was a Human girl. 

The girl couldn't be more than sixteen at most, if Martin's guess was accurate. He knew that Diana had taken Humans to her bed, most of them without their consent, but he had never been attracted to the way Humans looked. He had gotten used to the body suits that they wore to make them appear Human and had come to find Humans attractive in a distant, aesthetic sort of way, the way you would find any graceful creature. The thought of mating with one, however, had never crossed his mind in even in his wildest dreams.

He took a second look as they stepped into the cell and the girl backed away from them. 'Shit!' Martin thought with disgust. 'She can't be old enough to do this. She acts like a scared child, but at least if Diana does mate me with her there isn't a chance of any offspring.' The thought trailed away as he realized just what was going on. Diana would have her revenge in the nastiest way possible. 

There was no way for a child to occur naturally between a Visitor and a Human. By mating him to a Human female, Diana was observing the Leader's orders that no child be conceived or at least that was what she would say if asked. Diana thought that he was a prude though. She probably thought that he'd refuse, thus giving her a reason to have him shot and killed, and even if he didn't, she'd have the satisfaction of watching him have sex with a Human, something she thought he would abhor. She would be very pleased to see him humiliated.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Robin Maxwell knew that she shouldn't have left the rebel's hideout but she had just wanted to feel the air on her face without restrictions for a minute. She hadn't meant to be gone long or to get into any trouble. She just wasn't used to living like a fugitive and needed to feel free for a short time. 'Big mistake,' she growled at herself.

She had been caught like the amateur she was, but instead of being brought to a police station like she had expected for breaking curfew, she had been taken to the Visitor's LA mother ship. Once there she, along with the other women, had been searched, scanned and then she was taken to this cell and left alone.

By the time the door had finally opened she had nearly worked herself into a panic. It didn't help that the one Visitor that she knew, Brian, walked in holding a laser pistol to another's head. Where Brian was tall, dark and handsome in a teenaged boy fantasy kind of way, the Visitor he was holding at pistol point was shorter, stockier, blond and much older. He wasn't as handsome in Robin's opinion, but he wasn't a dog.

Robin wasn't happy that Diana walked in behind them with a smile on her face either. Robin didn't know what was going on but her slim hope at Brian's arrival was shattered by the gleeful looks on Brian's and Diana's faces. Robin might have been only a teenaged girl, a spoiled California princess at that, but she was more than familiar with those sorts of looks. She had seen the exact same look on the faces of the popular girls at school when they were about to publicly humiliate someone. It was just her luck that she seemed to be part of the object lesson. There would be no help to be found from either of them.

When Diana began her little speech, Robin didn't get it at first, but by the time the Visitor called Martin began stripping off his uniform the realization that she could either have sex with the alien or be eaten (EATEN!?!?!) had fully penetrated her mind. Although she might be a sixteen year old girl in the middle of the full teen angst and rebellion stage of life, Robin Maxwell was no fool. She stripped as well, and began to plan out her reaction to their scheme. 

If this had been a school yard incident, and even if she hadn’t been the object lesson to the one to be humiliated, any sort of attraction Robin would have had for Brian would have died simply because of his gleeful participation. The fact that the consequences were lethal, should this Visitor refuse, simply made her even more furious with him. Well, two could play at that game, and as this was her first time, she was determined to enjoy herself, and hopefully make it enjoyable for this guy too. ‘Bet these jerks didn’t think of that one,’ she told herself. There wasn’t much she could do to get her own back, but turning the tables on the humiliation game was about as good as she was going to get. With any luck, that wouldn’t get either of them killed.

Martin couldn't just have sex with the girl without saying anything. Not only would that be rude light years beyond what was even remotely acceptable, he had to let her know that he had no desire to hurt her. He also didn't dare let Diana know that he was even the least bit concerned about the girl or she would use that against him as well. He'd just have to do what he could for now and try to make it up to the girl later. "I don't want to hurt you, but I have my orders," he said to her calmly.

"Thanks," Robin said. She didn't bother to mention his 'orders' because, (really?), the pistol that Brian had shoved into the back of his skull, (and it really disturbed her at how much practice Brian must have had at doing so to be able to keep the pistol there even as the other Visitor stripped), said it all. The poor guy had to do this or be killed.

Martin didn't know much about Human mating customs, at least as far as the mechanics of sex were concerned. He had only skimmed over that part of the information that he had been given, being far more concerned with learning the language and public behaviors of Humans, but he did know that most intimate contact among Humans began with kissing. So, with the laser pistol still jammed into his head, that's where he started.

Robin placed her arms around his neck and stood up on her toes to try and reach. Quickly understanding the problem that their differences in height created, Martin gently lifted her off the ground. Robin quickly wrapped her legs around his waist to get a better grip. Much to his surprise the experience was much more pleasant than he had expected, mostly because she had positioned her hands right on top of two of his arousal spots on his neck, (he assumed to try and control the kissing), and her position made sex with her rather easy. 

To their later surprise, they both quickly forgot both Diana and Brian were even in the room with them. In fact it wasn't until Diana grabbed Martin's right arm and peeled a strip of the scales off his arm that she got his attention. Martin jerked his head away from Robin and hissed in pain. Robin screamed in shock as the same thing happened to her right arm. Through the pain she could barely make out that Diana was grafting Martin's green, scaly skin onto her arm in place of the strip of Robin's skin that she had peeled off and had done the same with her skin to Martin's arm. Robin was in too much pain to pay much attention but she distinctly heard Diana say, "I'm sure you'll be very happy together," before she and Brian left laughing. 

Robin couldn't move, pinned to the wall as she was by Martin's weight. He eased her down and left her on the floor, clutching her arm while he grabbed his uniform. He quickly threw it on and then grabbed Robin's clothes. He tried to gently help her put them on but was hampered by the fact that he really didn't know how they went on as much as the injury to his arm. Robin helped as best as she could and between the two of them, they managed to get her mostly dressed. Then he took her to his personal quarters.

Martin's personal quarters were small, although large for a junior officer. Entering the quarters Robin could see that there was a built in bunk on the right hand side and a doorway on the left led to the bath. The bath wasn't large but held a dust shower, a small sink and an elimination booth. The wall that held the bunk had a wall of built in cabinets, animal cages and the opposite wall held a desk as well as more built in cabinets. The far wall had a port hole.

Martin set her down on his bunk and then set a small malfunction into effect in the surveillance monitors. He and his brother had often been spied upon as children. By the time they had discovered it, they had also figured out a way around it and that they couldn't do it very often without being discovered - but if ever there was a time he needed privacy it was now. The moment he knew that the security cameras were down he started cursing. "Zon take them both on a trip through all twelve hells!"

Robin watched as Martin pulled out what seemed to be some kind of first aid kit, at least that's what she hoped it was, and continued to curse at Diana, Brian and it seemed the universe in general. He knelt down next to the bunk. "I don't know if this will work on you but it's all I've got," he explained as he gently pulled her hand away from the skin graft. He gently worked some type of paste/lotion all over the graft and into the skin around it while muttering to himself in his native language. 

Robin was fairly sure that he was swearing again. It occurred to her that she should have been scared out of her wits but just as the pain in her arm faded and she was about to freak out, Martin spoke in English. "And to top it all off the psychotic bitch didn't let me finish!" In that moment Martin went from a six foot tall, mouse eating (she could see a group of them in the cages along the wall) reptile alien to simply a guy. 

Robin burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. It was a choice between either laughing, or crying and his remark was so typically male that laughter won out. He'd had the skin on his arm ripped off without benefit of painkillers, had her skin grafted onto his arm and he was complaining about not getting off. The offended look on his face didn't help and she continued giggling while he gently wrapped gauze around her arm.

"I'm sorry," she finally managed to get out. "But that was such a guy thing to say! I mean, you could have been any of the guys at school for a minute there. By the way, I'm Robin Maxwell."

Martin leaned back and took some of the medication for his own arm. "Martin and I think I can understand that, it's just that thanks to Diana I've been celibate for two years now because I'd rather give up sex than sleep with her. I guess she finally figured that out. She wouldn't have been vicious enough to marry us like this if she hadn't."

That stopped Robin's laughter cold, "Marry?" She thought back to Diana’s words just before she’d left the cell and she blanched. She really wasn’t old enough to even consider getting married!

"The closest translation into your language would be 'Battle Bride'," Martin said as he tried to medicate himself. Robin took a bit of the goop and began to smear it onto Martin's arm the same way he had hers. "Thanks," he said and sagged against the wall that made up the headboard for his bunk. "It's one of our oldest and most honored traditions and of course Diana has perverted it, but you do meet all of the requirements, at least as far as I'm concerned."

"What are those?" Robin asked.

"You are, or rather were a virgin female, your father is a member of those who have taken up arms against our Leader, and he's an important figure in your resistance," Martin paused to hand Robin the gauze. "Of course I don't happen to agree with our Leader in his plans for this planet but that's beside the point right now. Diana thinks that I do and her giving you to me as a Battle Bride as a reward is what is required on her part. The fact that she thinks of you as food is the real perversion, that and the fact that she didn't bother with any ceremony or pain killers. The only thing she needed to do to make this legal was the skin grafts."

"Oh crap," Robin muttered, overwhelmed by the idea of suddenly being married and to an alien at that.

"My people don't have divorce but I'm sure that we can get someone from whoever does divorces for your people to do whatever it is they do to end a marriage. Your people do require your consent, correct? That should give them a reason to end the marriage." Martin tried to reassure her that he be willing to end their marriage.

"Yeah, but it looks like shotgun weddings are normal for yours." Robin was faced with a hard decision. There were certain things that she had sworn to herself that she would never do and getting a divorce, unless her life was in danger from the man she married, was one of them. Martin hadn't hurt her. In fact, he had been the only one to offer her any medical attention at all. From what little she had seen he was a genuinely nice guy. She sighed, "I don't believe in divorce except under special circumstances and you don't qualify. You haven't tried to kill me, you've done your best to try and keep me from getting hurt. I can understand why you might want one though."

Martin watched as Robin finished wrapping his arm. The two inch band of her skin on his arm was covered now but what it represented was burned into his mind. "Battle Brides are an important part of our history and culture. Wars have ended because of them, alliances have shifted, heroes have been hatched to them, it is one of the most honorable positions that my culture has," Martin said softly. "But Diana and the Leader have done away with honor and it is more than I can stand. He has done things that are dishonorable in the name of keeping our people alive but the real reason is so that he can gain more power. He has taken the position of Battle Bride and defiled it. He takes women who are not qualified and uses them to breed shock troops, turning them back on their mother's people." 

Martin looked into Robin's eyes. "I cannot be a part of that. My mother was a Battle Bride. My father caught her himself in a raid. Their marriage ended a generations long conflict between their Houses. My father taught my brother and I that Battle Brides are to be honored above all else. They are bringers of peace. I know very little about your customs and I do not wish to," Martin shrugged helplessly. He wasn't even sure what could happen but there were a vast unlimited number of things that could go wrong. "How can I honor you?" 

Robin sat holding Martin's uncovered hand. There was no denying his reptilian nature. She was holding onto the proof. Where a Human hand would have nails, he had claws, short and black. His hand was covered in soft green scales, but he spoke of honor and history, things that her parents used to debate over dinner, and he’d said that he wanted to honor her. He had asked her how to do that rather than just assuming that she'd fall into his customs. Would staying married to him be all that bad?

Sex with him sure hadn't been, at least before their audience had butted in with the whole rip their skin off bit. "I guess we stay married then. It wasn't that long ago that marriages weren't up to the girl or even the guy sometimes, just over a century or so. I don't know what we're going to do." Robin echoed Martin as she too trailed off helplessly. She was only sixteen. Her life wasn't supposed to go like this!

"Take it one day at a time I guess," Martin said. "I can give us a few more hours of privacy but then the cameras will turn back on. When that happens Diana will be watching. I have to be her loyal lieutenant where she can see," he warned.

Robin huffed, "I'd rather she have to figure out if we did anything or not than give her another show."

Martin grinned, "She thinks I'm a prude and that the only way I'd have sex with you is with a pistol to my head."

"Is it true?" Robin asked, flirting a little. She hoped that it wasn't. Sex with him had been good. She'd come close once and he hadn't been close to finishing. 

"No, I just didn't want her to get ideas," he admitted.

"Well then, let's see how many times we can fix your frustration problem," Robin said and leaned in to kiss him.


	3. Chapter 3

Martin couldn't help but feel satisfied, a little lost in his own world, as he went about his duties the next day. While his night with Robin hadn't been his longest performance, (three times last night and once this morning and he really hadn’t cared about the cameras by that time. Let Diana think he really was that desperate to get laid, it wasn’t that far from the truth), he'd had a surprisingly good time and Robin hadn't any complaints either. It wasn't until Donovan grabbed him that he woke up from his bemusement. 

It was time to let Donovan, and through him the people of Earth, know what the Leader had planned for them. He took Donovan to one of the holds where Humans were being stored for cannon fodder and for food. Then he took the Human down to where his partner Tony's remains were. Martin knew that they hadn't been cleaned up yet. That was where they met another captive Human; one who had been badly beaten. His name was Sancho. Martin knew that Diana had a raid planned in a matter of minutes. He would have a chance to get Donovan, Sancho and Robin off of the Mother ship while that was happening. 

Too bad it didn't quite work out that way. He managed to get Robin to the small fighter while Donovan got Sancho but whe  
n they arrived, Donovan didn't want Martin to fly the fighter. He wanted Martin to stay on the Mother ship and help out the rebels from there. Martin didn't want to do it. He was scared of what Diana would do to him, but more importantly he was worried about Robin. How would her people react to their marriage? Who would defend her? She had to be his first priority. He looked over at her to see her nod in agreement with Donovan. She wanted him to stay. He was more valuable here leading the Fifth Column, or perhaps she hadn't been so pleased with his performance after all. He really needed to look up Human sex practices when he got the chance.

Relenting, Martin told him how to fly the fighter. Then Robin did something that would shock him when he woke up later. "Martin, you'll need a story," she said, and then she swung the laser pistol she'd slipped out of his holster. Donovan looked over at her in shock as Martin folded, knocked out. "Well, that's what they do on TV! Get him out of here and take off!" she said.

Donovan knew she was right, although TV rarely got the details correct. With a whispered apology, he tossed Martin out the hatch and scrambled to take off. He didn't have to hear the shouts to know that they'd been discovered. Donovan's first flight of a sky fighter was a rather harrowing one. Not only did he have to adjust to the delicacy of the controls but he also had to contend with the two fighters flying after him. Sancho found the chair that he was in was the back gunner's chair and managed to shoot one of the other fighters down. The second was taken care of by a mountain side when Donovan got the crazy idea to fly right through a tunnel.

Robin did her best not to freak out but she was never into thrill rides. She was the one who wanted to stay with her sister Katie when her family went on the roller coasters at the amusement park. Katie was far too small to go on them and Robin had been thankful that someone had needed to stay on the ground with her. She closed her eyes and hung on tight, thankful when they finally landed after yet another flying battle; this time with the group of fighters strafing the mountain camp where her family was.

They had made it through the two short battles alive and managed to drive the Visitors off, but the mountain camp was in shambles. Robin stumbled through the smoke and flames looking for her family. She found them, but not as she had hoped. Her father was clutching her two sisters; Polly aged twelve and a mirror image of their mother, and Katie aged five and dark like their father and Robin, to him. Their mother's body lay across a table nearby. It was the final straw. The stresses over the last 24 hours were too much and Robin broke down sobbing.

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"Wake him up damn it!" Martin could hear Diana yelling. He moaned. He did not want to have to deal with her. His head hurt. Wait a minute, why did his head hurt? The memory of Robin clocking him with his own pistol emerged from the pounding in his head. 'Guess I shouldn't have shown her where to hit,' he thought fuzzily. He recalled Robin had said something about him needing a story before she'd hit him. With that everything fell into place. He must be in the infirmary. He hoped that the Humans had made it.

"It looks like he's coming around," Steven said from where he stood behind Diana. Personally he rather liked Diana's aide. The man did a lot to make Steven's job easier. Handling Diana wasn't easy. But as Security Chief, he needed to know why Martin had gotten into that fighter with the Human girl.

Diana and the doctor she was arguing with turned towards the bed where Martin was now struggling to sit up. The doctor reached him first. "Lieutenant, I'm Doctor Reginald. I need you to answer a few questions for me." He then proceeded to run through the standard tests for a concussion. He didn't think that the young man was in any danger but he wasn't about to compromise any patients safety for the likes of these two senior officers. They had stripped off the lieutenant's Human body suit to check for injuries when he had first been brought in. He had seen the Battle Bride graft. Someone, probably Diana from what he knew of the woman's interests, had done this to the poor boy. He had to make sure he was alright before letting her get her claws into him.

Martin had no trouble interpreting the looks the elderly doctor was giving him. The mark of his Battle Bride would be all too obvious in his present state of undress. "I'm fine," he said and let the doctor know he was telling the truth with his eyes. "What happened?" he asked. He figured if the doctor was checking for a concussion he could fake some short term memory loss.

"The doctor informs me that you were hit in the head," Diana snapped. She had come into the infirmary to have her own slight facial wounds attended to when she saw her lieutenant being checked out. She still hadn't had time to fix her Human disguise and the half Human, half reptile appearance of her face was irritating.

"I checked the security logs. You were taking a Human girl with you in a sky fighter," Steven remarked. He wanted to get to the bottom of this quickly. He had more important tasks to complete; like figuring out how Donovan had gotten on board the mother ship in the first place.

Martin raised his right hand to rub his head. This was calculated to show off his bandaged arm. If Steven had seen the security tapes, then he had to have seen the same bandage on Robin. "I was taking her to get her some supplies. Food and stuff," he paused. "I can't remember anything else. I'm sorry, Commander."

Diana nodded. It really didn't matter what he had been intending to do with the girl. She was just a means to an end. What was more important was Donovan and his infuriating ability to get into places where he didn't belong, and this time he had destroyed several of her sky fighters!

Steven's eyes widened when he saw the bandage on Martin's arm. 'Unlucky bastard,' he thought. 'He was probably going to dispose of her quietly where Diana wouldn't find out about it. The woman does have a sick fascination with these Humans but to force a Battle Bride on her lieutenant.' He wouldn't ask any more questions. There was no need to bring this to Diana's attention any further. It would be far better for Martin if Diana forgot all about the girl. "I have to see how the Human got in and out again with only you trying to stop him," he told Martin. "Diana, I'll see you later when I find those responsible."

"See to it!" she snapped. Then she turned on Martin. "Get dressed and get back to your duties." Martin nodded and climbed off the examining bed. It looked like he was going to get away with this. Maybe he could get Barbra to find some information for him on Human mating practices. He really needed to figure out where he screwed up.


	4. Chapter 4

Once the resistance had moved everyone down to the new base and Julie had patched up the injured, Robert Maxwell brought Robin in to see her. While the two scientists speculated as to why Diana had done the skin graft on Robin, Robin was determined to remain silent. Just in the last few hours she had heard her father, who was normally a very gentle man, spew out the most hateful and vicious things she had ever heard about the Visitors and what he'd like to do to them.

In a way she could sort of understand. She had heard that grief could change a person drastically and her mother had been murdered by the Visitors in the sky fighters, but where her father's grief and anger was mindless, striking out at all Visitors regardless, hers was much more focused. Martin had told her that morning that Diana would be leading the raid on the mountain camp. She had even more reason to hate the Visitor Science Officer now than she had before.

She couldn't hate Martin, though. He had been very nice to her. He had made sure she had medical attention for her arm and food that she could eat. He had even tried to shield her from his eating habits although she had insisted on watching. It hadn't been as bad as she had thought it would be - at least as long as the mouse was dead. He had found a way for her to get off the mother ship, away from Diana and that bastard Brian and back to her family. Plus he was great at sex. She knew that made her a shallow person but at the moment she really didn't care. He'd made her come close to passing out from pleasure. Marriage to Martin had become less and less a bad prospect the longer she had been around him. He was better in bed than any Human guy she'd ever heard about from her friends.

While the rest of the resistance was going about figuring a way to get rid of the Visitors for good, Robin was stepping into the role of group Mom, or at least the local babysitter. Not only did she look after her little sisters, she also watched out for every child that had survived to make it to the resistance base in LA. There were more than she had realized before. All in all there were about fifteen kids under the age of fourteen. Most of their parents were doing their best to learn to fight and to keep themselves and their children alive. Robin stepped in to take care of things like who had hit who, to kiss boo boos, and to make sure that the kids had something to occupy them.

And for those like poor Josh, who had lost both of his parents to the Visitors, well, Robin did her best for them too, when she wasn't learning her own lessons of war. It wasn't fighting or spying that she was learning, however. She was learning how to be a nurse to Julie's doctor. Truthfully, neither one was qualified, Julie only having gone through most of her med school education, but they were all that was available. Julie taught Robin when she could and there were a few books that they managed to steal from the local hospital that Robin studied. 

Mostly Robin just tried to live from one day to the next, but the nausea she was experiencing most mornings wasn't helping. If she didn't know that it wasn't possible, she'd swear she was pregnant. Martin was a Visitor though, which made that idea completely impossible. Maybe she had just picked up some sort of bug in the holding areas?

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The good news was that Barbra hadn't laughed her ass off at him when he had admitted what had happened to him. The bad news was that she didn't know much more about Human mating practices than he did, but she did know where to look. "The Humans actually publish reading material on the subject," she said as she led Martin to a small bookshop. It was a cozy place with chairs around tables and an even smaller coffee shop attached so that shoppers could read what they had purchased in comfort. Barbra came here often to check out the different literature that was available. She had also made friends with one of the local waitresses.

"Jenny, I need some help," she said as she dragged her superior officer to a corner table. Jenny waved and came over with a pitcher of water. She knew that it was the only thing on the menu that the Visitor would drink. Barbra gestured for Jenny to join them at the table and leaned forward. "This is Martin. Jenny, he met this Human girl and needs some help with your people's mating practices."

Jenny looked over at the male Visitor who had his face in his hand. Obviously Barbra's point blank way of asking about things wasn't a universal Visitor trait. She would have never known how blunt the alien woman could be if they hadn't gotten to be friends. Barbra had hardly talked at all the first time she had come in, but they had bonded over philosophy books and Barbra had slowly opened up to her. Now she was asking for help in getting her friend his girl. "I'm guessing that you don't know where to start or something went wrong?" she asked.

"It's a long story," Martin admitted after dropping his hand. Thank goodness Barbra had found someone willing to help, even if she had just about embarrassed the scales right off of him just now. "I think something went wrong, but I'm just not sure where."

Jenny reached over and patted his hand. "Don't worry so much. Things like that happen to Human guys too. Now, if I'm going to help, I need to know the circumstances." She settled in for the long story.

Martin tried to figure out just how he was going to explain this one. "We had sex and I thought things were fine but," he shrugged helplessly at her. "It's also more than just a single encounter sort of thing," he said hoping that would be enough.

Jenny realized that he wasn't going to give her the long story so she decided to settle for what she could get. "You don't need just sex advice, you need courting rituals," Jenny said and jumped up. She knew just where to go. There was a translated version of the Kama Sutra that she had in the back. Not only was it written in English, it also had a great deal of the background culture explained as well. Which was an especially good thing considering who she was going to give it to. It was her own copy that she had used for one of her college classes. Courting rituals were going to be a little harder.

She brought back the book to find that the two Visitors were sitting over their glasses of water like some Humans would be a couple of beers. Barbra was so obviously trying to cheer the poor guy up. "Ok, now this is considered to be the number one manual on Human sex ever written. This copy has a lot of stuff on the culture it was written in, so that the more obscure phrases and such are explained. If you get confused, bring it back and we'll talk. I know every inch of that book. One of my professors was obsessed with it so I really got to know it well." Jenny pushed over the book to Martin. "Now about courting customs, that's going to be harder. There are no hard and fast rules about courting."

"Courting is serious, correct?" Martin asked, wanting to get it right.

"Courting is what you do when you want to marry the girl," Jenny said bluntly.

"That's what I need," Martin nodded. "I need to honor her customs. I need to act honorably with her." He paused. "I'm just not so sure how to do that."

"Ok, first I need her background," Jenny said. "What race is she and where did she grow up?" Those were the very basic things that she needed to help this guy out. Silently she was cheering. She was a closet romantic and the thought of helping this poor alien win his girl was probably the matchmaking fix of the century, if not the millennium!

"She's Caucasian, and she grew up here in LA. She said that her background was middle class and nothing spectacular." Martin said nothing about her father's background as an anthropologist or that she and her family were resistance members. That would only get them all in trouble.

"Ok, that makes things a little easier. She has a similar background to mine. Now, the most important thing is that you need to get to know what she likes and what she doesn't like. Paying attention to her is vital." Jenny took out a notebook and pencil and handed them to him. "Take whatever notes you need," she coached. "The thing you need to do right now is get in contact with her. Make sure that she knows that you want to stay in contact. It doesn't need to be anything big, but she needs to know that you aren't about to love her and leave her. Doing that is very dishonorable." 

She needed to teach him how not to act like a jerk. "Send her a letter if you can't talk to her in person for some reason. Send her flowers or candy; those are small gifts that show you want to continue things with her. If she doesn't like either of those things or you can't find them, send her something that she likes. It doesn't have to be big, but it shows your interest in her hasn't gone away when the sex ended." Martin nodded and started writing things down. He had a lot of studying to do.


	5. Chapter 5

Ruby had been a resistance member once before. She had been a young woman traveling through Paris when WWII had broken out and Germany had over run France, and now here she was teaching a new generation of people the things that she had learned about clandestine meetings and spying. She had been only a minor member of her French Resistance group and hadn't done anything really violent but she was good at spying. One of the reasons she had been, and was now, so good at it was that she was very observant about things around her. That was why she had noticed what was wrong with young Robin Maxwell. 

Her connection to Robin was rather convoluted. Her best friend for years had been Abraham Bernstein. The Maxwell family had been Abraham's next door neighbors. Abraham's grandson and Robin had grown up together and Ruby had played grandmother to Daniel Bernstein, Robin, Polly and Katie Maxwell more often than not. While she didn't know what was up with the skin thing, she knew Robin well enough to figure out what her other condition was, and the fact that Robin didn't want her father to find out about it.

Ruby waited until Robert was out of the resistance headquarters before dragging Robin down to Julie's room. "I know that you don't want Robert to find out but you need to see Julie," she said. "You have to take care of yourself."

Ruby turned to Julie who had looked up from her bunk. "You need to examine Robin, Julie."

"Ruby thinks I'm pregnant," Robin explained exasperated. "But I can't be. It's impossible! I just picked up some kind of bug in the holding area or something." 'I can't be. Martin's a lizard. He's a very sexy lizard, but he's still a lizard,' Robin tried to convince herself. 

Her thoughts went off in the direction they often went to when Martin came up, even in a round about way. Martin hadn't contacted her but it wasn't like he had her phone number, and she had been the one to say that he should stay where he was. He was just doing like she'd asked, right? He wasn't treating her like Brian would have, right? It was just Diana looking over his shoulder that kept him from sending her a note or something. 'Of course that's it. I'm his wife, not his one night stand,' she tried to convince herself. 'He wasn't the one who treated me like dirt.' That had been Brian.

"Well, let's check you out anyway," Julie said, her professional demeanor coming to the fore. She had noticed that Robin tended to rub the graft of Visitor skin when she was nervous or upset. Had something other than just the skin graft happened to her?

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Martin had finally managed to get in contact with Donovan when he wanted to, rather than the other way around. Not that it was a bad thing for the resistance man to be able to find him when it was necessary but he hadn't had the letter he had written to Robin on him when Mike found him. That really wasn't good. The information that he had read told him that the longer Robin went without contact from him, the more she would be likely to think she'd been used. "Mike," he breathed in relief at the sight of the Human.

"You needed to see me?" Donovan asked. While they couldn't get together often, he and Martin had seen each other about once every three weeks in the three months since the Visitor attack on the mountain camp. This time they were meeting in an old barn not far outside of LA.

"I've got some information for you," Martin said. "Steven has broken out his shock troops heavy armor. Soon your bullets won't work on them any more."

"Shit, are you sure?" Mike asked. It wasn't that he doubted his friend's word; just that he really didn't want to hear this.

"I'm sure," Martin said. "Your people needed to know right away that you'll need something with more penetrating power as soon as they start wearing it. And I," Martin squirmed a little. This wasn't going to be easy to explain. "I need you to do something for me."

"Sure, if I can," Mike answered. He had never seen Martin this nervous. Even when he had been talking Martin into letting him fly the sky fighter and Martin remaining on the mother ship, the Visitor hadn't been this nervous. Scared yes, but he hadn't been nervous. It also hadn't taken much time to talk him into staying. In fact, if it hadn't been for Robin clocking him, Mike would have said that Martin would have walked back onto the mother ship under his own steam. Instead, the look on Martin's face when the teen had hit him was a priceless memory. Mike was just glad that whatever story Martin had concocted had worked.

"I need you to give this to Robin Maxwell. She's the girl we got off the mother ship a few months ago," Martin said as he pulled out the letter. "Please don't read it. It's personal and has nothing to do with anything you need to know about."

"Robin? The one who clocked you?" Mike grinned. His alien friend was acting so uncomfortable that Mike could only jump to one conclusion. "Don't tell me you're sweet on her after that!" 

"Mike!" Martin groaned. He knew the euphemism thanks to Jenny. Mike looked startled at the alien sound but his grin returned when he figured out what it was. "It's not like that! Well, sort of but," he sighed with frustration. "It's complicated," he finally managed to get out.

Mike sobered. "Her father hates Visitors. He'd probably strangle you with his bare hands if he got the chance, and that's without you making a play for his oldest daughter," he warned. Mike didn't want his friend to get hurt over something like this. War was one thing, courting a teenager whose father would like nothing more than to shove a shotgun where the sun didn't shine was something else again.

"She's my wife Mike," Martin said firmly. "Diana married us the night before. I offered to let your people divorce us, however you do that but she refused. She said that as long as I wasn't trying to kill her she wouldn't agree to it. My people don't have divorce at all. I need to let her know that well, that I meant what I told her. As far as I'm concerned, she's my wife until she says otherwise."

"Man what a mess," Mike said after a moment, thrown by the information. "Is that what the skin graft thing was all about? Or was the reason you wanted her off the mother ship so bad was because Diana was beginning to experiment on her?"

Martin smiled and tugged up his sleeve. His arm had healed. He cut the fake skin covering his arm and peeled it down to his wrist so that Mike could see the Battle Bride mark. "It's our version of a wedding band I guess you could say. A captured enemy female can be given as a Battle Bride to any loyal warrior who has proven himself if she isn't married. At least that's what it's supposed to be. Diana's not exactly an honorable officer in case you hadn't noticed." He leaned back against the wall of the barn and recovered his arm. It was still odd for him to see the band of Human skin. He hadn't gotten used to it yet. He wasn't sure he ever would.

"That bitch sure does know how to make things complicated doesn't she?" Mike asked rhetorically.

"Is there anything Robin needs or wants? Something I could send with you?" Martin asked as he pulled out a laser pistol power pack. He'd gotten into the habit of carrying a second one with him. He would sneak one out from maintenance and pass them on to Mike. 

Mike took the power pack. Even with only a few pistols, it was better to have more ammunition than to be without it when it was needed. "She's studying to be a nurse and looking after the little kids." He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know her that well."

"Well, I guess I'll have to think of something," Martin muttered.

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Pregnant, she really was pregnant. Robin sat staring at the wall in shock. It wasn't possible but it was true. Julie had confirmed it with her exam. "Robin?" Julie asked, but Robin ignored her. How could this have happened? Every science course she had ever taken said that it was impossible for two different species, especially as different as mammals and reptiles were, to breed; unless Diana had done something? Robin knew she was a scientist. 

Robin searched her memory of the short time she had spent on the mother ship, this time ignoring the memories of the sex she'd had with Martin. That was a bit difficult as they were the memories she had been focusing on. Could Diana have done something with that scanner thing? Or maybe, she thought hard. Yes, just before Diana had ripped Martin's skin off, she'd been injected with something. She hadn't been paying attention; rather she'd been actively trying to ignore Brian and Diana and concentrating on what Martin had been doing to her. Could that have been it?

"Honey, can you tell me what happened?" Julie asked. It was fairly obvious that Robin had been in some serious denial about her condition. That wouldn't be out of character for a rape victim, and Julie didn't think that she was far enough along to have been pregnant before she was held on the mother ship. She distinctly remembered the sullen teen Robin had been before that incident. Robin wouldn't have been sullen if she'd been dating anyone. A new boyfriend tended to make young girls very happy.

"You can't tell anyone," Robin turned to Julie. "Please, promise me you won't tell."

"Doctor/patient privilege Robin," Julie reminded her. "I'm not allowed to tell anyone anything that you tell me in confidence."

Robin nodded. Then she haltingly started to tell her story. "I was taken to a holding cell. Three Visitors came in, one was Diana. The other two were men. One was holding a laser pistol to the other's head. Diana said that either he would have sex with me or he would be shot. I was scanned with something before I was sent to the cell. And when, well I think I was injected with something but I'm not sure."

Julie was stunned. "Then this child could be half Visitor? Was there ever anyone else?" For Robin's sake she hoped so. This was neither the time nor the place to be pregnant with the first half alien child.

Robin shook her head. "No, there's only been him." She rubbed her arm.

Julie touched the Visitor skin on Robin's arm. "And this?" she asked.

"It's his skin," Robin admitted. She couldn't tell anyone about what it meant.

"Do you want to keep the embryo?" Julie asked.

"Of course I do! It's my baby!" Robin reacted without thinking. She could no more have an abortion than she could get a divorce. Abortion was nothing less than murder. Besides, she couldn't face Martin one day and admit that she had killed his child. Their child hadn’t even been conceived in Diana and Brian’s little porn show. That had happened during their marathon session in Martin's quarters later that night. It would be wrong to kill the result of something she had enjoyed so much.

"I had to ask," Julie said. "I guess we'll just see how things go then, - but we do need to tell your father that you're pregnant. It won't be too much longer before you start to show."

"Ok," Robin agreed. Julie was right. She couldn't hide a pregnancy forever.


	6. Chapter 6

There were very few letters exchanged between Martin and Robin, mostly because neither could really say anything that they were doing for fear that someone else would read their letters. Martin's letters were full of stories of he and his brother's exploits as children. Robin's were about her studies and stories of her and her sisters, but that small bit of reassurance was all that Robin needed. Knowing that she hadn't been abandoned by Martin, and knowing how closely Diana and the rest of the fleet’s commanders were watching him, had given her the courage to do what she had to do. 

And she needed that courage to deal with the aftermath of the various raids that the older people were pulling off. Even worse was when they didn't pull off the raid, losing people and doing no significant damage to the enemy. Robin had never seen a person die before, much less while she was trying to save their lives, - but she had now, and she knew she would continue to see more. 

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Polly was in the lizard room, the room that had cages full of reptiles that the scientists were experimenting on. Robin was with her and they were feeding the animals. "I wonder if this is what they look like without their body suits?" Polly wondered holding up one of the lizards.

Robin looked over. "Kinda," she said distractedly. "They're a darker green and they have shorter claws though."

"You saw one of them?" Polly's intention of picking a fight with her sister fluttered away in the view of this new information. She had planned on shoving the lizard into her sister's face. Robin could be such a pain, but this was far more interesting.

Robin shrugged. "I saw one of them take a shower. Well, a dust shower, not a water one." She put the dish full of crickets in one of the cages. Just then one of her frequent bouts of morning sickness caught her and she ran out.

"Polly, have you seen Robin?" Robert asked as he walked in.

"She went to puke again. Did she tell you that she saw a Visitor taking a shower without his body suit?" she asked eager to share the grotesque information.

"Thanks sweetie, I really needed to hear that," Robert said as he left in search of his oldest daughter. He found Robin in the bunk room where she and his other daughters slept. She was clinging to a bunk support

"Honey please, just tell me who the father is and I'll find him," Robert pleaded. "You shouldn't have to go through this alone." He wanted to support his daughter's decision, but not knowing who had knocked his daughter up was killing him. He just prayed that she hadn't been raped. An accident under the sorts of conditions that she had been in while she was a prisoner was something that he could handle. Rape wasn't.

'That's what I'm afraid of,' Robin thought. "No," she insisted. "It wasn't supposed to happen. It was an accident. He doesn't need to know."

"Ok, ok, I'll stop asking," Robert relented. "If it's any consolation your mother always had pretty bad morning sickness too." It wasn't exactly a lie. Kathleen Maxwell really had, had terrible bouts of morning sickness during her three pregnancies, but Robin's was going on for far longer than Kathleen's had.

"Julie thinks that I may need to cut out some types of food; that maybe the baby can't handle them," Robin admitted. Julie had been talking about switching her to an almost totally raw food diet as that was more similar to what the Visitors ate. 

"Is there anything I can get you?" Robert asked.

"Tea? The herbal stuff? It's almost the only thing I can drink," Robin admitted.

"One cup of tea coming right up," Robert promised. He kissed her forehead before heading off to the kitchen. Watching to make sure that her father really was out of the room Robin got up and walked over to the lone mirror on the wall. Once there she pulled her turtle neck away from her neck to expose a bluish-green mark at the base. The mark was slowly growing. 

If Julie hadn't told her that it was probably a Visitor pregnancy symptom she would have been terrified. But Julie had dated this geek in high school who was into reptiles of all kinds, and one of the few things she had remembered was that when one of his pets had become pregnant the small lizard's skin had changed color. Julie had also cautioned her about informing her of any and all cravings she might have. With this child being half alien there was no telling what the baby might need in the way of nutrients and the best way to figure that out would be to listen to her body.

"Robin, because the baby is a Visitor there are going to be things that happen to you that aren't normal for a fully Human pregnancy. We just have to listen to what your body is telling us and then do what we can to accommodate what both you and the baby need." Robin would be glad when the baby was born. She was already tired of being pregnant. Maybe if she'd been able to share it with Martin it would have been different but with the war nothing was as it should be.

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Martin knew that Donovan and his people were up to something. That was nothing new but when he started getting cagy then Martin knew that the trouble coming was bigger than usual. Plus, there was the fact that he was trying to get uniforms and weapons. The Fifth Column leader sighed and rubbed his face, wishing for a moment that he could take the Human mask off, but knowing that even here, alone in his own quarters, he would be punished for disobeying the Leader’s orders to remain clothed in the Human body suits unless dust bathing or mating. For a moment he considered cursing the surveillance, but shrugged it off with long time practice. The resistance and what they were up to were far more important than the surveillance that had followed him and his brother their entire lives.

Mike had asked for weapons before and Martin had managed to get a few to him but he had never asked for uniforms before. Martin hadn't wanted to tell Mike that he couldn't get him any more weapons, but the truth was that strict track was now being kept. Uniforms were going to be easier. One of his Fifth Columnists worked in the morgue. It would be easy for him to get uniforms that wouldn't be missed. 

Then there was the little matter of Sean Donovan. Martin owed Mike a lot for his own family life. He would have never have known that he was going to be a father himself if it wasn't for Mike telling him that Robin was pregnant. He understood why Robin hadn't told him. It wasn't something that could be written down and they couldn't meet face to face. That little revelation had sent him searching through Diana's records in an effort to figure out just how this miracle had been achieved. What he had found was that Diana had planned the entire thing. He didn't think that he would ever understand that woman. 

Diana's experiments had provided some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in the last decade - but the way she worked had become more and more erratic and less scientific with the more power she acquired. It was more like a child pulling parts off of their food to see what would happen before the meal died than a serious scientific study. The trouble was that she was still a great scientist. Even when she threw scientific reasoning out the porthole, she still achieved things that should have been impossible.

How could he possibly get Sean out? The boy was going to have to be revived before anything else and that required expertise that he didn't have. Well, first he was going to have to find the boy. He had narrowed down where he was to a section but he'd have to have a picture to find his exact location. He hoped that Mike could get him one. He didn't want Mike to lose his son. He didn't want to lose his child either. He remembered with chilling clarity Mike's assessment of Robin's father's feeling towards Visitors.

Martin leaned back in his chair and considered the difficulties of reviving the boy and then getting him off the ship. Just then Steven marched into his quarters. "Steven?" he asked, straightening up. "Is something wrong?"

Steven threw down a computer disk. "You have a message from the home world. It's sealed under a House Heir sigil. Why?" Steven demanded.

'Crap,' Martin thought. 'I should have remembered that Kkkeesk would feel my pain.' That was one of the things about him and his brother. When one was hurt, the other felt it. They could also feel each other's strong emotions if they were on the same planet. No one outside of his immediate family was aware of this quirk between the twins. In fact, it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the medical literature either. His family had done their best to keep this information a secret. It would be all too easy for someone like the Leader to turn this link into a weapon, either for his own use or against the twins.

Martin sighed and took the disk. He knew that Steven shouldn't have tried to open it. House messages were supposed to be kept private, but that was just one more thing that was becoming a thing of the past under the Leader. Martin opened the message and found what he expected; a mishmash of Visitor writing that said 'Who is she?'. There was nothing else.

"Is that a code?" Steven demanded over his shoulder.

"No, it's a written version of a spoken language that exists only among my immediate family," Martian admitted. Actually it only existed between him and his brother. It was their secret language, one that no one had ever been able to understand.

"What does it say?"

"Someone informed my family that I was given a Battle Bride. They want information on her," Martin said flatly.

"But why would they send that under a House Heir sigil?" Steven asked. Then his face cleared as the reason dawned on him. Martin had opened the message with his palm print. "You are the House Heir?" he asked quietly. It wasn't unusual for some Houses to send their heirs into service under a cloak of secrecy. It gave the heir a good look at politics from the ground up and it protected them from being used as a pawn.

"My brother is now," Martin said. "I no longer qualify. I have to answer this if you don't mind, Steven."

Steven nodded and quickly left. It was a good thing that his career was no longer attached to Diana's. What she had done would earn her a quick death sentence along with anyone who had helped her. He should do what he could to help Martin. Even as a former House Heir, the lieutenant would have a lot of power one day and he would remember those who helped him in his time of difficulties.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: A quick response about Visitor society in answer to a review. Martin is not Royalty! Visitors have (at least here) a society where each House, or rather the family in charge of certain sections of their homeworld, sends a representative to a ruling council. The Leader has taken over that council. Martin and his brother Philip are not sons of the Leader. They are sons and heirs of the current elder in charge of their House. So, they nominally have a democracy, but it is ruled by a warrior caste.

 

'Well, Julie warned me that this might happen.' Robin had gotten up in the middle of the night hungry and rather sleepily had munched down on a plate of meat that she had found in the fridge. The trouble was that it was raw. When she had woken up enough to realize what she was doing she had merely sighed and finished the plate. At least the baby wasn't interested in mice like Martin was.

The next morning she had told Julie about her craving and the fact that she had finished off the meat. "Well, it won't kill you to eat raw meat once in a while as long as it doesn't have any e-coli bacteria." Julie paused to consider how to deal with this new development. "Don't do it anymore until we can find you a better supply of meat. Meat becomes infected with the harmful strains of e-coli when it isn't prepared properly. I want to make sure that you don't have to worry about it if you have another craving for raw meat. You should increase the amount of cooked meat you're eating until I can find a better supplier. Hopefully that will lessen the craving."

Robin nodded. "At least the baby doesn't want something alive," she pointed out her thought from the night before.

"Oh Lord," Julie grimaced. "I hadn't even thought about that."

"Thoughts like that keep me from freaking out," Robin said with a grin. "I've seen them eat. So in comparison, this isn't so bad." Julie had to agree. Eating raw meat once in a while was far preferable to eating something that was still alive.

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Martin was furious. He had almost figured out a way to get Sean out and Donovan pulled this little stunt! Sending Walsh into section 34 was not only stupid; it had disrupted his attempt at a dry run. Yelling at Mike did provide him with a little satisfaction but it wasn't what he really wanted to do. He was just frustrated that he couldn't turn Sean over to Mike already.

After Martin had finished yelling they settled down to talk about the plan Mike had put together to expose John on television. That plan was almost as crazy as the last one. Martin was coming to understand that crazy was Donovan's normal mode of operations. He wondered if the now deceased Tony had ever managed to slow Mike down. Going over the plan, Martin realized that yes; there was a possibility that the LA resistance could pull this off, if they had a little bit of help. He would have to sabotage the computers so that they couldn't shut down the transmission as well as finding someone to pilot the shuttle that would help most of the resistance members escape. He ran through the members of the Fifth Column in his head, looking for a pilot that could help and wouldn't be missed. Too bad he couldn't be that pilot. He'd like to see Robert Maxwell for himself.

What he'd really like would be to see what he was up against in the form of his father in law. There was a great deal that you could tell about a person in a battle situation. While he didn't think that Robert would pose much of a threat to him personally in a hand to hand situation, that wasn't the only way Robert could kill him. Or worse, he could take his hatred out on Robin and the baby. Martin just didn't know enough about the man to know which way he would jump. That was far more stressful.

Mike's comment on being negative and giving himself an ulcer wasn't that funny. With as much stress as he was under, an ulcer was actually a possibility. Fortunately no one bothered to notice or if they did they didn't bother to comment, on the fact that he had increased his number of martial arts sessions in the gym from weekly to almost daily. They all assumed that he was dealing with the stress of dealing with Diana. Between hitting stuff and people in the gym and the meditation sessions in his quarters he was just maintaining his equilibrium.

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The first inkling that Robin had that a Visitor was in the resistance base was when Robert and Julie brought Willie into the lab. They were so busy running tests on his blood that they didn't notice that he was rubbing his wrist. Casually Robin walked over to where he was sitting, hoping that her father wouldn't notice. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," Willie replied.

When Robin asked him if he knew Brian it wasn't because she was eager to see the snake again. Well, not in the romantic sense anyway. She was looking to see if there was a way she could get him back for the way he had treated her, as though she were less than nothing. Shooting off his family jewels, and yes, she had looked when Martin was bathing so she knew about where they were placed, sounded about right to her. Making sure that he couldn’t perform for Diana seemed like a good revenge for how he had treated Martin too. Of course she wanted Diana to pay too, but her treatment of them in the cell was actually far down Robin's list of grievances against the Science Officer. Much higher on the list was the murder of her mother. 

Willie hadn't known Brian but did ask about her baby. Robin had thought that he was talking about her obviously bulging stomach at five months. But he hadn't, instead talking about how the mark on her neck was almost all the way around. Robin clutched at the handkerchief that she had stupidly allowed to gap open and looked over to where her father and Julie were sitting. 

Her luck had run out. Robert had heard and put two and two together and come up with a Visitor baby. "I'll kill the bastard," Robert muttered before turning to Julie. "You're going to abort that thing and do it now!"

"Robert!" Julie protested and Robin said, "No!" But Robert Maxwell was listening to neither.

Even when cooler heads tried to prevail by having Willie taken to a cell and having a discussion about the situation Robert held firm. Mike, Julie, Robin and Father Andrew, a grizzled Catholic priest who had served in South Africa in his youth, all tried to get Robert to back down from his stand that the baby be aborted. Mike talked about how the risks weren't his to take. It was Robin's body and her child; she should be the one making the decision. Julie told him how dangerous the abortion could be. Robin flat out told her father that it was murder and she wanted her baby. Father Andrew tried to make him see the larger picture; that this child could be the bridge between their peoples and the start of the ending of the war.

"Mike, Father Andrew, with all due respect to both of you, butt out! We are talking about my daughter not yours. Robin is only seventeen. She's a minor and this is my decision not any one else's. She is having this abortion. Julie, you will do it," Robert insisted, ignoring his daughter completely.

Julie was sick to her stomach. She had never wanted to perform an abortion, although she had assisted at one once. She had gone to medical school to help save lives, not to take them, but her ethics classes had made this situation perfectly clear. As long as Robin was a minor, then Robert was the one to make her medical decisions. "I'll set things up at the hospital," she whispered.

Robin cried, begged and pleaded with everyone right up until she was on the surgical table at the hospital. If it wasn't for the fact that people would have died if she'd kicked up a bigger fuss, (due to the fact that this was being done at that hospital), she would have fought them as well. Finally Julie couldn't stand it any more and sedated her. 

Two resistance members stood guard outside the surgical room, Elias Taylor and Brad Johnson. They were a study in differences and the strange bedfellows that standing up for what was right could make. Elias was a self proclaimed ex-hood and the skinny young black man had become part of the resistance at the death of his older brother, a doctor. Brad was an ex-cop. He had joined the resistance because he had nearly been killed by the Visitors for protesting their taking over.

"Man I'm glad they shut her up," Elias whispered. "I mean, I get that she doesn't want to do this but I just don't understand why. I can't imagine having one of those lizards crawling around inside of me and wanting to keep it."

Brad looked over at his partner with sympathy. "I've never been able to understand it but I've seen it before." Elias threw him a puzzled look. "Rape victims that are also very religious have a tendency to say, 'it's god's will' as a coping mechanism. It's god's will that this happened to me. It's god's will that I got knocked up. That sort of thing," he said. He shrugged. "All you can do is try to help the lady out as much as possible. Personally I think that Robert's doing the right thing."

Back in the surgical room everyone was stunned at the outcome of the attempted abortion. The baby wouldn't let them perform the abortion. Every time either Julie or Fred, the sympathizer doctor that Julie had gotten to help, tried to cut even one of the hundreds of umbilical cords connecting Robin and the baby, Robin's vital signs dropped. They nearly lost her twice before Julie insisted on stopping. Julie was actually thankful that she could honestly tell Robert that there was no way to abort the baby. Robin was going to have to carry the child to term and they were going to have to deliver it.

"Robert, I want to make this perfectly clear," Julie said as she and Robert stripped out of their scrubs. "The only reason you got this far was because you are Robin's father and she is still underage. If you so much as dare to lay a single hand on this child after it is born I will kill you myself."


	8. Chapter 8

Robin was so relieved that she was still pregnant. As much as she had tried to understand her father's rage at the Visitors, this was one thing that she couldn't. Babies were complete innocents. They did not ask to be conceived. That was the responsibility of a child's parents. Her parents had drilled into her head for years that very simple concept; and the likelihood of pregnancy if she had engaged in sex before getting married. Which she hadn't, but her marriage to Martin was beside the point because her dad didn't know about it.

It was one of the reasons she had been a virgin when she'd married Martin. She wasn't a slut. She had never met anyone she liked well enough to get pregnant for. Not that she had been planning on staying a virgin forever, but she wasn't about to get birth control until she was out of her parent's house. She couldn't imagine facing her mother with a box of condoms between them. Even now with her mother dead, the very thought brought a blush to Robin's face. The point was she had been determined to be old enough and responsible enough to not get pregnant when she did start fooling around. Getting pregnant seriously hampered any extra curricular activities, not that she was able to do anything with the war going on. 

The one part of her well, rather nebulous plan that had come true, was that she was in a serious and stable relationship with her baby's father. You couldn't get any more serious than married to someone who considered divorce to be as alien as she did. Of course for Martin the thought was literally alien. Robin smiled through her tears as she curled up on her bunk. 

"Hey are you Robin?" a new voice asked.

Robin looked up to see an older woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, with long curly blond hair and blue eyes standing in her doorway. She nodded.

"I'm Harmony. Can I ask you some questions? If it's not the right time or anything I understand. It's just that I was on a date with Willie and I really need someone to talk to." Harmony paused. People had told her that Robin's child was a Visitor and it was a toss up as to whether or not she'd been raped. Robin refused to name which Visitor had fathered her child. After all the fuss that had happened when it was discovered that her child was a Visitor, Harmony could understand.

Robin remembered that Willie was the Visitor she had been talking to when her dad had found out about the baby. "Sure," Robin said and did her best to sit up, wiping her face. It would do her good to quit thinking about her dad. It wasn't easy to sit up and Harmony hurried to help her. Then she sat down on the bunk next to Robin.

"I guess my biggest question is, do you still like the guy? I mean, I understand you don't want anyone to know who he is, so I'm not asking that, but I'm really on the fence about Willie. I thought he was a really nice guy but he lied to me. They all did so I guess what I'm really asking is, does that make a difference for you now that you know?" Harmony wrung her hands. She wasn't kidding when she said that she needed someone to talk to, preferably someone who was in a similar situation.

It took a moment for Robin to realize what she was talking about. "When I first realized he was a reptile, I mean when I had time to realize it, he said something that showed just how much of a regular guy he was. I burst out laughing," Robin admitted. "From what I've seen, the only thing that most Visitors are hiding is the fact that they're reptiles. Their personality comes through loud and clear."

"Really?" Harmony asked. She wanted to believe that.

"Yes," Robin said firmly. "From what's been passed through Mike Donovan by the Fifth Column, only about half of the Visitors even know what their real mission here is."

"Willie wouldn't have been one of them. He's just a technician." Harmony said thoughtfully. "They even screwed up his assignment. He was supposed to go somewhere in the Middle East and learned Arabic. Instead they sent him here to LA where he barely speaks the language. He gets English mixed up a lot. It's kind of cute," she admitted with a little smile.

Robin nodded. "But for him to be able to speak two alien languages even that well means that he's probably very smart," she pointed out.

Harmony nodded. "He just gets similar words mixed up. We went out to the movies and he tried to tell me about something like them that they have on his homeworld. He's smart and sweet. It's a killer combination for me. Most of the Human guys I know are complete jerks."

"Don't let the fact that he's a reptile scare you off. Nice guys are too hard to find to let one go just for that," was Robin's opinion.

"You're right. God, the number of bozos I've dated! I was willing to hang on to Willie when I knew he wasn't from Earth. I shouldn't go making judgment calls like that now that I know just how alien he is." Harmony perked up and leaned over. "How good are they in bed?"

Robin giggled and settled in for some serious girl talk. She hadn't had a good gossip session in months.

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It was time for the big party. Robin was amused that on one hand the resistance was getting ready for one of their biggest attacks on the Visitors to date and yet at the same time, they really were getting ready for a party. She and Harmony were helping Julie with her hair, makeup and dress as well as prepping their makeshift hospital. It was Robin who had sent Elias, easily their best break in man, back to her old home after clothes for the party. Her parents had been going to university functions for more years than she could remember. Not only did Julie need a dress and wrap, so did some of the other ladies. Plus her father had a tux in the back of his closet too. 

While she wasn't speaking to her father unless it was business, she did care what happened to him. That was one of the reasons that she was watching the event on TV. Her father had one of the staring roles in this drama. He was the one giving Julie her back up. And Julie was the one who was going to rip John's face off. Ripping off the fake face of the Supreme Commander on international TV would hopefully wake more than a few people up to what was going on around the world. At the very least it would show that the Visitors weren't as fully in charge as they thought.

All of the kids, plus Harmony, Robin and those few whose job would come later that night sat around a small TV set watching the televised party. They all sighed in relief when Julie and Robert got through the security at the door. Their fake security passes worked. They watched in anticipation as the LA resistance did what they had said they would. They showed the world what the Visitors were. Then the raiders ran while the Visitors did their best to shut down the transmission.

That was the signal that the rest of the resistance members were waiting for. In anticipation of casualties, Robin and Harmony got the children to bed. They knew that the less of the aftermath of violence that the children had to witness the better. By the time the fighters returned, all was in readiness. Unfortunately while they were prepared for the few minor casualties, they weren't prepared for the worst.

"Where's Julie?" Robin asked as the fighters came pouring down the stairs.

"They got her," was Mike's curt reply.

"She's DEAD?!?!" Robin shrieked in panic.

"NO! I mean they got her," Mike said hurriedly. "We'll get her back!" he swore.

Fortunately the only injuries were minor as Robin and Harmony were now the only medical personnel in the entire resistance. Oh Brad and Mark had first aid training as they had both been police officers before but that didn't qualify them to do very much. Harmony on the other hand, was almost through her studies to be a nurse and Robin had done her learning under fire.

Ruby found Robin later sobbing on her bed. "What is the matter child?" she asked. It wasn't as if she couldn't guess but it would be better for Robin to say it.

"I'm the most awful person in the world!" Robin wailed. She threw herself (as much as she was able to being nearly six months pregnant) in Ruby's arms. "When Mike said that the Visitors had Julie all I could think of was that I needed her! She probably being tortured right now and I'm such a selfish brat!" she broke down sobbing again.

"No you're not. It's a perfectly reasonable reaction. I know what Julie promised you and what you're really worried about is your baby. You're not wishing harm to come to Julie or thinking of her as your slave who only exists for you," Ruby said calmly. "Don't you worry now. We'll all make sure that the baby is safe, and we'll bring Julie home too, you'll see." She rocked the pregnant teen to sleep.

On the other side of the doorway Robert Maxwell stood listening to the conversation. He too remembered Julie's promise. He just didn't understand why people seemed to think that he was the bad guy in all of this. His daughter had been raped. She was pregnant with an alien child who wasn't likely to survive and would be at best a malformed monster if it did live. He had only been trying to spare his daughter the anguish of having to care for a child with special needs that could only remind her of being raped! Why did everyone seem to think that he was going to kill the child after it was born? Terminating a pregnancy under these circumstances was one thing; killing a child who had managed to survive was another. He would have to deal with the situation later. They still had to get through the rest of the pregnancy, and right now, he had to help get Julie back.


	9. Chapter 9

The next day everything changed. Ham Tyler, also known as The Fixer and his friend Chris Faber arrived at the resistance. Ham was a professional soldier who usually worked for the CIA. These days he worked for a network of resistance groups all over the world. 

Unfortunately, the Visitors also came to the resistance headquarters, but they weren't there to help. They were there to crush the resistance. It wasn't Julie who had talked of course. It had been the Pascal, the counterfeiter. Still, the end result was the same. They had to move. Tyler and Chris took the rear guard for the resistance members who evacuated to a new location when the Visitors arrived, one that Julie didn't know about. It was a harsh fact of war. When someone who knew the details of your underground was captured, you had to change those details. 

The new headquarters was an old abandoned movie lot. It had been some kind of western with quite a few functioning buildings and while it had all been abandoned years before they were still functional. While they were getting settled in Harmony finally had a chance to talk to Willie alone. They both quickly came to realize that they both felt the same way about each other and decided to put the whole Visitors are lizards and they want to eat us thing aside. After all, Willie didn't want to hurt anyone. He was far too kind hearted to want too, and Harmony knew that.

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On the Visitor's homeworld, in a large underground chamber sunk deep into the rocks below a sea of sand, a Visitor was throwing things around a in a classic temper tantrum. "HOW DARE SHE!!!!!" The Visitor's immediate family was gathered in the room with him. Unlike a normal situation where they would be attempting to sooth and calm the older male, they too seethed with anger. This time the Leader's Consort had gone too far.

"Kkkiiiistk says she is his bride. She meets all of the necessary requirements. She is even carrying his child thanks to that psychotic slime-screed!" a younger male growled. "It matters not to him that she is Human."

"HE is an honorable man and honors the position of Battle Bride. It is that witch who defiles it!" growled an older female. "Even if his bride does carry his child, it should never have happened, and that she-devil should never have touched my son's genetics to create such a child! The Leader's choice to throw honor to the great winds will destroy us all!" She said the last with great finality. It wasn't just the fact that the Leader had made war on the Houses of the other continent. They had been fighting with them for generations and one more Leader who was willing to fight the enemy was nothing new.

What was new was that they had never had a Leader who was willing to throw away so much of their honor to win. "Enough! This is the final insult." The older male went to sit on what could only best be described as a simple throne of a solid, black rock. "From this moment on our House will no more obey the Leader. Spread the news far and wide, those who will join us are welcome to asylum in our Sanctuary. We will add them to our House if they so wish. Any Houses who wish to ally themselves with us are welcome. Any Human who wishes to join our cause is welcome here as well; not as cannon fodder, but as equals. Any who can be captured from the Leader's forces, whether they be our kind or Human will be treated with the respect with which they are due. This House now goes to war!"

 

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Mike had a plan or at least the beginnings of a plan to get Julie back. Tyler was sure that Julie was either converted or a gibbering idiot and in either case it wasn't worth trying to get her back. However he did back down long enough to agree to meet with Martin. It turned out that Tyler really should have passed on the meeting – either that, or kept his mouth shut. 

After Mike had introduced Ham Tyler to Martin and vice versa, Taylor started in on his usual nasty attitude. "Stow it Tyler," Mike said and then turned to Martin. "How's Julie?"

"Diana is trying to convert her," Martin began, "but she's having a few technical problems. Nothing that will hurt Julie but she won't be converted until the sabotage is corrected." Martin smirked. He had known that sooner or later he would have to interfere with a conversion. The problems that he had introduced would look like sloppy maintenance. "But it won't last for long," he warned.

"Oh, and I'm sure that you're really broken up about that," Tyler sneered.

Martin could and would put up with Tyler's bigoted attitude, mostly because thanks to Diana and the rest of the Visitor Leadership it had been earned; but Tyler's implication that he didn't care if Julie was converted or not tipped the scales that he had been balancing on for six long months. Julie was the source of the only real medical care that Robin had and her and his child's only chance at survival. Martin saw green, - and Tyler saw red as Martin attacked. As far as Tyler was concerned the attack came out of nowhere. One minute he'd just been mouthing off and the next 'Gooder's' little lizard buddy was kicking his ass.

Mike was startled at the fact that Martin had lost his temper and at how fast his friend was moving. What he wasn't surprised at was the fact that Martin was winning. Thanks to his hanging out with scientists for the last several months he knew that reptiles were surprisingly strong and Martin's precise movements showed that he was probably a professional. Ham Tyler wasn't that good at hand to hand combat. He wasn't bad, but he preferred to use weapons and explosives to hand to hand. It was no wonder that Martin was winning.

Mike waited for a second before doing his best to drag Martin off of Tyler. He had to wait until Martin had knocked Tyler into a wall before he could safely grab him. "Martin, we need him! I told you I don't like him either but he's our source for the teflon ammo we need! Without that we can't get Julie back! You know Steven's troopers are wearing armor that our regular ammo won’t touch!"

Martin stopped as the information slammed into him. He shook Mike off with a curse and stalked away a few steps. He worked on calming his temper while Donovan checked Tyler. "She's Robin's only chance Mike," he whispered as Mike came back over to him.

"I know," Mike whispered, "but he doesn't. Not only has he not met Robin yet, Robin hasn't told anyone who the father of her child is. I think that's mostly to protect you." Martin nodded. "Listen I have an idea on how to get Julie out." Mike went on to explain his idea but Martin shook his head.

"It would never work Mike, but it does give me an idea. I just needed one last thing." Martin nodded sharply. "Get your people ready. I'll have Julie and some other prisoners transferred to security headquarters within the next three days. Julie will have a few nightmares to contend with and she'll probably be drugged for the transfer, but she'll be alright."

Mike frowned, his mind racing. Then he grinned, "You lead Julie from the shuttle into the building. We'll shoot you, nothing more than a flesh wound, but when you go down that's when we'll attack."

"Good, I'll send you the details as soon as I can." With that Martin walked out. He didn't even look back at Tyler.

Donovan shook his head at the sight of the battered man and helped him back into their truck before getting in himself and driving away. "What the hell's wrong with him?" Tyler asked. "I didn't say anything that didn't need to be said. I admit I was mouthing off, but that was no reason for him to try and beat the shit outa me."

Mike glanced over across the cab of the truck, assessing the other man. Tyler was bleeding and hurt, but he wasn't too badly beaten aside from a few broken ribs. Mike knew that one of the few things Tyler would appreciate was classified information, especially if he was in on it. "This is classified, Tyler. No one outside of me, Martin and Robin Maxwell know this." He paused until Tyler nodded his head and agreed to keep the information to himself. "Six months ago Robin was captured and taken up to the mother ship. Diana, in one of her more psychotic moves married Martin and Robin. Martin got Robin to us but not before Diana somehow managed to get Robin pregnant with Martin's child. Everyone knows that Robin's baby is a Visitor but no one outside the three of us knows that Martin is the father. The reason that Martin lost his temper with you is that Julie is our only doctor. Robin and the baby stand a good chance of dying without her."

Ham Tyler froze for a split second. "They're really hitched? I mean, they both accept it?" he asked quietly. Mike nodded. He knew about Tyler's past but wouldn't say anything, and Tyler wouldn't either. The spectral image of Tyler's own wife and small daughter, lost in another war along time ago, simply drifted between them, acknowledged but not spoken of. "Your lizard buddy hits hard," Tyler finally said. He wasn't going to let go of his hatred for the Visitors, but Martin had earned his respect.

 

Back at the movie set, Mike helped Tyler into their makeshift infirmary. They were followed by a half a dozen fighters, including Tyler's friend Chris. "What happened?" Chris demanded. The others wanted to know as well. 

Tyler just shrugged. "Donovan's lizard buddy packs a mean punch," was all that he would say. Chris helped him up onto a table where two young women began to check him out. One was a dark haired teen and Tyler stared at the lizard skin on her arm and the weird greenish mark around her neck. She wasn't hiding the marks either. She had tied her hair up and was wearing a t-shirt so that everyone could see just how big the mark on her neck was. She was also very pregnant. This had to be Robin Maxell.

"What did you do?" Robin demanded. She was carefully wiping the dried blood off of Tyler's face. 

"I accidentally pushed a button that I didn't know was there," Tyler admitted. "I figure I deserve what I got after Donovan gave me the background info."

"Well don't go and do it again," Robin said sternly. "Martin's got enough on his plate without you pushing him. Did you know that the Visitor commanders are depending on him to keep Diana in line? That's what his job is; too make sure that she doesn't go too far, as far as their concerned, but he is her aide so he can't just tell her when she's stepping over the line or she'll kill him. Plus there is the whole running the Fifth Column thing, which is a very hard job to do for him, seeing as how he's stuck dealing with most the high command watching over his shoulders all the time."

"How do you know that?" Chris asked, impressed. That sort of job wasn't easy and he had to have been doing it for a while if these people trusted him as much as they did.

"I got captured six months ago. Martin got me out. I was sitting in a corner when he had to deal with no less than three commanders coming in and yelling at him about something that he’d let Diana do, or rather that’s the spin they were putting on it," Robin explained.

"Well the good news is that he's got a plan to get Julie out and she hasn't been converted yet. Martin's had the conversion chamber sabotaged. We move sometime in the next three days," Mike said, happy to give this order. Everyone scurried to check out their weapons and ammo supplies. Three days wouldn't give them much time but they were happy to take any chance to get their leader and friend back.


	10. Chapter 10

One day later a small package arrived from Martin through a few intermediary contacts. Inside was a video tape and a short note. '10 o'clock on the 9th. By the way, I thought that you'd get a kick out of seeing this.' Needless to say, everyone was curious as to what was on the tape. Mike set it up in the saloon and everyone gathered around to watch the tape.

To their utter delight, it was a Visitor security tape that showed Diana throwing a fit at her discovery that the dead person on a morgue slab in front of her that she had thought was Mike Donovan, was in fact one of her own people in disguise. Martin, Steven and another Visitor female that they didn't know watched her. When Martin made the suggestion to move all of their important political prisoners to the security headquarters, Diana had snarled, "See to it" before stalking out with Martin at her heels.

To the resistance members surprise the tape didn't end there. "Is she always so; excitable?" the woman asked looking after Diana.

"Well, yes," Steven said. Then a calculating look came over his face. "I have to admit Commander, that without Martin to steady her, I'm truly fearful that she would have completely lost it by now. He's done quite well at a job that is getting exceedingly more difficult as time goes on."

"Oh? Perhaps she just needs a bit of a rest?" the Visitor Commander said archly. "The stress of her position can be very difficult under these circumstances after all." The implications weren't wasted on Steven, nor were they wasted on the resistance members. Discord in the ranks of the enemy was never a bad thing.

Tyler took the tape and by the end of the day had made copies of both it and stacks of pictures of the Visitors in it. He passed the pictures out at dinner, walking around the tables and handing them to people. "Ok people, I want you to take a good look at these. Memorize these people because it looks like this is the new lizard in charge of the second mother ship that just arrived. The dark haired one is Steven and as you already know, he's in charge of security. It's his job to keep us from succeeding in throwing their lizard asses off this planet. Everybody knows Diana but I figured more than one of you would like a target to practice with," Tyler said with a grin. Dark laughter met this statement. "The last guy is Martin, our friendly neighborhood Fifth Columnist. That means that if you have him in your sites, you don't kill him." No one noticed that the picture he handed to Robin was Martin. While he was sure that the girl would have gotten her hands on a picture of her husband without his help, this way she didn't have to try and sneak one off. Ham Tyler was a very hard man but he did have a soft spot for women in her circumstances, so much like his own dead wife's.

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Ruby, in her disguise as a cleaning woman, had gotten a hold of the security building's plans. As she was the only one with access to the building, Donovan and Tyler planned the raid around her. She had to pull the plug on the building's power when Martin went down so that they could get the rescue detail through the electric fence that surrounded the building. When Robin had objected to her staying in the building during the raid, Ruby was the one who pointed out that an explosive device could be found before they were ready to set it off. "I know you're just worried about me, child, but let me tell you this, if I die during this raid, I'll count it as worth my life. Not only will we be getting Julie back, but we'll be freeing a lot of other people from them as well. Most of the time that's something we can't do, so I think that it's worth dying for, not that I want to die mind you," she said.

"And that's something I wanted to remind people," Mike said. He was standing at the front of the room they were using to plan the raid. "There is a lot more than just Julie at stake here. Martin is using this as an excuse to move all of their political prisoners to where we can get at them. Tyler and Chris will move the ones we rescue out of LA and get them to safety. We have a chance to save a lot of lives here, so be careful and grab as many people as you can. Those of you on the perimeter, be careful not to shoot any of us on rescue detail! Friendly Fire Isn't! The fewer casualties we have right now the better. Caleb, you'll be driving the first rescue truck. Sancho, you'll be driving the second." Both men nodded, comfortable now with the idea of driving a vehicle through a fire fight. "The rest of you, throw the people you get a hold of into the back of the trucks. Don't worry about any injuries they may have. We'll get them patched up when we get them back here. If worst comes to worst, I'm sure they'd rather die free than in the hands of the Visitors." More than one head nodded at that simple truth.

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Raid Night

 

The Visitors made it ridiculously easy to figure out which person was a prisoner and which wasn't, even with all of the prisoners in plain Visitor uniforms. Each one was escorted by a shock trooper, save Julie, and the troopers were positioned between the prisoners and the open areas around the security headquarters. Julie was escorted by Martin. Tyler took the job of shooting Martin. Not only was he the best qualified for it, it was also a good choice for a little payback for the broken ribs that Martin had given him a few days before, even if he didn't intend to give the Visitor anything more than a flesh wound.

When Martin fell down from Tyler's shot to his leg, dragging Julie with him, Chris radioed Ruby to kill the power. The lights went out, along with the power to the electric fence amidst the confusion of the resistance members shooting the still standing troopers. Once the power was out the rescue teams ran in and threw the prisoners in the back of the two trucks as they swept by at low speed. Mike was the one to sweep Julie up and into a truck, flinging himself in after her. The raid was a success with only a single fatality on the resistance' side. 

That fatality, as Robin and others had feared, was Ruby. The worst part for Robin was the fact that it wasn't a Visitor guard who had stumbled across the elderly lady in the basement, but Daniel Bernstein. The fact that Daniel was a traitor was something Robin had come to accept over the last seven months. The idea that he could shoot the woman who had acted as their grandmother for their entire lives was something that shocked and horrified her. Although she could and did, pour her sorrow over the act onto Harmony's shoulders, she also wrote to Martin. It wasn't something she could hold back from him. She did her best not to name names but she did feel better for writing to him about it. With Harmony she could cry but with Martin she could express her sheer rage at a boy she had considered her adopted brother killing the only grandmother she had ever known as her own grandparents were dead. What few knew was that Ruby had touched Ham Tyler as well. And he had a plan for one Daniel Bernstein, one that would take time and careful planning to carry out.

 

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Julie stood up at dinner in the communal mess hall the next night. The drugs had worked their way out of her system and Robin and Harmony had said that she was fine as far as they could tell. "Ok everyone; I'm sure that you all have questions about what happened to me so I figured I would give my report now so you could all hear it." Everyone waited in silence, not knowing what to expect. "First, when they figured out who I was Diana scheduled me for conversion. I was drugged into partial unconsciousness and placed in the conversion chamber. That's when something went wrong for Diana. For some technical reason the machine wouldn't turn on."

"Martin had someone sabotage it," Mike interrupted. 

Julie grinned, "Well, it looked like someone hadn't been taking care of the machine and Diana was pissed. They sent me back to a holding cell until they could fix the problem. After it was fixed they tried again. This time the machine worked, but just as they were getting started, someone we all thought was Mike ran into the room and started shooting the place up. Whoever it was died from multiple laser blasts and once more the machine needed to be repaired so I was sent back to the holding cell. Sometime after that I was again drugged but instead of being taken to the conversion chamber, I was taken to a shuttle. Then you rescued me. Thanks everyone. It means a lot that you came after me."

"And on that happy note," called Caleb as he and Elias ducked into the kitchen and came back out, "we have ice cream to celebrate!" The kids squealed and most of the adults gasped. They hadn't had ice cream in over a year at this point. "Complements of a little judicious theft from a certain number of highly placed individuals," he said.

"And we have cake too," Harmony called as she led the Maxwell girls out of the kitchen. Cake wasn't hard to make from scratch as long as you had the basic ingredients. Most of those ingredients, such as eggs and flour, the Visitors were making sure that there was enough for all and so they hadn't had trouble getting them. The harder to find ingredients, such as powdered sugar for the icing, had been 'claimed' for the resistance by Elias at the same time as the ice cream. Everyone settled down to celebrate although the sorrow of Ruby's death hadn't yet been overcome. That would take time they knew by now and they also knew that Ruby would want them to celebrate Julie's return and the rescue of thirty political prisoners.

 

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Martin spent the next week holed up in his quarters with his leg up, reading. In a gesture of apology for his injury, (which Martin found very amusing because he was the one who had helped to plan the raid!) Steven had assigned his personal assistant Barbara to Martin. Barbara was to take over Martin's normal duties as well as to run any errands that Martin needed done personally. Martin was just grateful that it was Barbara who was the one Steven had chosen. She was his second for the Fifth Column and knew what to ignore when it came to Martin's duties. She also could run his messages to the rest of the Fifth Column and go planet side for him to get him more reading material. 

He had to explain to her just why he wanted books on Human pregnancy but as she already knew about Robin, he wasn't that upset about telling her. She in turn was shocked that he and his wife were expecting a child. When she got done cursing Diana in an unexpected demonstration of just how well she had learned English swearing, she had agreed to get Martin the books he wanted. 

Martin had already read about the basics of Human pregnancy but the last time he was in the bookstore he had seen a book for expecting fathers. He hadn't been able to get it that time, being too busy, but he had nothing to do for the next week. So he wanted to study up on what he was missing. From what he knew of his own species gestation, he thought it was both a good and a bad thing that he was stuck up here on the mother ship while Robin was with the resistance. On the one hand, he didn't have to deal with all of the difficulties associated with pregnancy. Dealing with a pregnant Visitor female was bad enough. Who knew what a Human female pregnant with a Visitor child would be going through? On the other hand, he was missing out on the wonder of his child growing and being born, and while he had other children, they had all been conceived at the Leader's orders. He had nothing to do with them after their conception. If he survived leading the Fifth Column, this time would be different. This time he was going to be a father


	11. Chapter 11

It was Lorraine, one of his Fifth Columnists, who informed Martin of the message from the homeworld. Civil War had broken out between a few of the Houses and the Governing Council. John, the Supreme Commander, had forbidden anyone who had seen the message to talk about it to anyone one. While those serving in the military were supposed to serve only the Leader as head of the Governing Council, many were still extremely loyal to their own Houses. John was concerned that many would chose to revolt against the Leader and go to work for the Fifth Column. He already had a war to fight on one front; he couldn't afford to open up another one with his own people.

Of course, John and the rest of the Visitor Fleet Commanders were doing just that but they didn't want to admit that more than a few of their people were siding with the enemy, preferring to believe that only a few people had decided to turn traitor. To them the fact that the enemy wasn't even another reptile species, but a mammalian one simply made the matter even more incomprehensible to them. To them mammals were food, plain and simple. It didn't matter if the mammals in question were an intelligent species or not. Martin knew that as long as there was a food shortage on the homeworld many would look the other way in the name of keeping their families and Houses fed, but just as many members of the fleet were either on the fence or actively taking part in thwarting the Leader's plans for Earth. John and his people had far fewer loyal soldiers than they knew.

Unfortunately it also didn't mean that Martin had more soldiers than they did. While most Visitors weren't fanatically loyal to the Leader, the famine back home did put them in a hard position. Taking sides on what most viewed as a purely philosophical discussion wasn't seen as very realistic approach to the hard question of how were they to feed their own people. It was a simple truth that most people, Visitor or Human, would ransom everything they had, even their own souls, if it meant that their children wouldn't starve to death, but that didn't mean that the Fifth Column wasn't growing daily either and once news of a civil war against the Leader circulated the fleet even more would join.

After Lorraine had told him about the civil war at home, Martin contacted Jennifer, the Fifth Column leader on the New York mother ship and a member of his House. He knew that one of her duties as the second in command of that ship was to shuffle personnel assignments. If she could get enough Fifth Columnists assigned to her ship, then they could take it over. His House back home would benefit greatly from having a mother ship at their disposal. He could only hope that it and the supplies it carried would make up for the fact that he would never return to his home.

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It was the practical joker aspect of her husband that Robin was getting to know through his letters that would have appreciated Ham Tyler's way of letting the resistance know that he had a way to simulate the sound of a Visitor's voice. Standing out side the resistance headquarters and yelling like he was a Visitor before walking in and taking the device off would have had Martin cracking up. Robin personally thought it was a good way for Tyler to get himself shot, but the devices did help them to impersonate the Visitors' voices so that they could recon their targets better. The alien reverberation that echoed through their words was something that both Humans and Visitors had come to take for granted. Anyone who sounded like a Visitor must be a Visitor and that sort of thinking was something they could now take advantage of. 

Of course not all raids were against Visitor targets. The resistance also had to get supplies and the Visitors couldn't provide them with everything they needed. So they made sure that the Human targets they raided were those like Mike's mother, those who supported the Visitors. On one such raid something caught Robert's eye. He had been looking for a way to apologize to Robin and hopefully reconcile with her but she hadn't made it easy. She still refused to talk to him unless it was absolutely necessary. Maybe she would accept this olive branch.

Later that night after all of the kids had been sent to bed, Robert approached Robin with a bag in his hand. She was sitting in the dining hall with Ham Tyler. They were eating something with their fingers off of a plate that he couldn't see. "What are you eating?" he asked before he could stop himself.

Robin wouldn't even look at him. Tyler did and calmly said, "Locusts dipped in honey and fried."

Robert shuddered. He knew that it wasn't something that would hurt Robin to eat. People had been eating locusts for centuries and still did in certain parts of the world. It just wasn't something that you would normally see in modern America, but then Ham Tyler traveled in primitive parts of the world where frequently bugs were the only source of food, and Robin was carrying a Visitor child, so it wasn't that strange that they would be eating something like that - or so Robert told himself. He truly had no wish to find out what other pregnancy cravings his daughter was experiencing. What little information he had was more than his stomach could handle.

He placed the bag on the table in front of her. "I saw this on the raid and thought you could use it." He waited while Robin decided if she was going to take it or not. Slowly she reached up and took the diaper bag and her hand shook a little as she lifted it off the table when she realized that it wasn't empty. Robin shot him an assessing look and set it back down the bare inch that she'd lifted it off the table. She pulled it over to her and opened it up.

Inside was a stack of cloth diapers with plastic pants, a baby outfit that could work for either a boy or a girl, a set of bottles with a couple of cans of formula, and on the bottom everything she would need to knit a baby blanket in a colorful, soft yarn. She looked at him at once both hopeful and wary. "I'm not going to hurt the baby Robin," he sighed. "I just didn't want you to have to deal with the problems that are likely to happen. The most likely outcome of this kind of hybridism isn't going to be pretty. There are so many things that can and are very likely to go wrong, but I'll help you in any way that I can."

"I thought you wanted my baby dead because it's half Visitor," Robin said, still wary.

"No honey, I just know how much can go wrong and that's when we're talking about a fully Human pregnancy. When you add in the complication of trying to meld two such very different physiologies, the complications can be staggering. I don't want your baby to die but the simple truth of the matter is that the likelihood of your baby being able to survive on its own isn't good. If the child lives, well there will be problems. I just don't want you to have to deal with them. It's not the baby I want to kill. The father on the other hand, I want to tear into small pieces with my bare hands."

'Good luck with that,' Tyler thought to himself. There was no way that Robert Maxwell, who although he was a good resistance member was not a professional soldier, would be able to take Martin down. Martin would clean Robert's clock; after all, the alien had already cleaned his.

"I don't want you to do that," Robin protested. "I don't want to have three kids to raise." Her words were rather pointed and Tyler was impressed. She had completely bypassed the entire consent issue and had gone for an entirely different and yet very important fact; the fact that Martin would take Robert out if he tried anything. Not that Tyler thought Martin wanted to kill his father in law, but self-defense was self-defense, and if it came down to that, Robert was a dead man.

Robert nodded. It was a small price to pay to get his daughter back. "Can I at least reserve the right to hate his guts for the rest of my life?" he asked with a smile. Robin shrugged carelessly. That wasn't something that her father was ever going to stop doing, even after he found out what had really happened. She knew that asking him to accept her new life was going to have to be done in small steps and that acceptance was all that she was ever likely to get. First she had to get him to accept the baby, and then she could work on getting him to accept her husband, but she wasn't stupid enough to think that the fact that Martin hadn't had any more choice than she did in the matter was going to help.

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Thanks to Tyler's little device and the uniforms they had gotten from Martin, the resistance was able to find out what Commander Pamela's ship was doing hovering over LA. The Visitors weren't even trying to hide the fact that they were stealing water any longer. Huge pumps were working overtime to channel water up to the second mother ship from the local reservoir. It had to be stopped.

The raid to sabotage the pumping station was a success, although they had lost yet another member of their unit. Mark, one of their two ex-cops, had broken his leg on the way out from planting the explosives in the pumping station. Rather than have anyone try to carry him out, he decided to stay behind and die, guarding the rear. There was a very simple and stark reason for this suicidal decision. They had only a few minutes to get out before a laser beam security system ran through their only means of escape. Anyone caught in the beams would be instantly incinerated. Mark knew he couldn't make it and that carrying him would only slow anyone else down enough to cost both of them their lives. Mark refused to do that and so he died. They knew he wasn't going to be the last person to die. All they could do was mourn him and continue on with the fight.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: There are two different POV's being shown in this chapter that are taking place at the exact same time. Because this timing is important, short little blurbs from each POV will show what is happening.

The second, or maybe third most thing that Martin had never wanted to happen, had. Diana had found out about Sean Donovan and was about to use him against his father. He didn't have time to warn Mike about Diana's plot before she had sent the message out. She had Mike's son and wanted him in exchange. The worst part was that there was absolutely no way that he could get Mike out of Diana's clutches now. The only thing he could do was to give Mike the option of suicide, should he be willing to take it when they finally brought him up to the mother ship. 

Knowing that there was a good chance that either Mike wouldn't take that option or that he wouldn't be able to before security found out about it, Martin packed up the things that he wanted to keep and sent them with Lorraine down to a small apartment that he had secured in LA. If Diana did manage to get his name out of Mike, then there would be nothing in his quarters for her to find. Then he sent a note to Jennifer in New York, along with a last message for his family. He had known for some time that he would not be returning to his homeworld. Either Diana would find out about him and he would die or he would go to the resistance on his own. With either option he would no longer be able to contact his family. They would need to hear from him before that happened. If he was lucky, then he would be able to get out. If he wasn't, then Lorraine would be able to get his stuff to Robin.

Martin wasn't able to be there when the exchange was made but that was alright. He was busy setting things up so that if he was killed, Barbara would be able to take over without any disruption. All too soon it became apparent that his suicide tactic had failed. The Fifth Columnist that had taken the poison to Mike was killed and Mike was brought in to one of Diana's torture chambers. Martin was at her side, playing the loyal lieutenant for as long as he could, but Diana didn't choose torture, which Mike might have withstood long enough to die. Instead, she chose to use a truth serum. Mike couldn't withstand Diana's concoction and soon gave up Martin's name as his Fifth Column contact. Martin managed to shoot the guard, killing him instantly. Diana used the distraction to get away, but not before Martin shot her in the shoulder. He dragged Mike out of the chair and into the ventilation shafts. 

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Far away, the resistance had moved their headquarters into an abandoned prison. As Julie, Harmony and Robin began to set up the new infirmary, Robin went into labor. After only a few hours of little to no progression, Julie realized that Robin was going to need a C-section. Harmony, Willie and Robert did their best to help but Robert and Willie were unable to do much of anything other than hold Robin's hands while Julie and Harmony prepared her for the delivery.

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In the ventilation shafts, Mike was apologizing for not being able to keep his mouth shut. Martin shrugged it off and told Mike that it had only been a matter of time before he had been discovered. The shafts that they were in were as large as the New York subway system but they couldn't stay still for long. If they stayed in one place they would be found. They continued to move until for some reason that Mike couldn't see, Martin fell to his knees, a strange cry issuing from his throat.

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At the prison, Julie delivered a baby girl who appeared to be a normal Human, at least until she opened her mouth to cry at her birth. Her tongue was a reptile's. Robin was unaffected by the sight, being more concerned that her daughter was healthy than what she might have inherited from her father. Julie, however, wasn't as matter of fact and nearly dropped the baby. Harmony grabbed the little girl before she could be dropped and Julie took a step back to regain her composure.

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This was something that had never happened to Martin before. He had lived his entire life 'hearing' his brother within his heart and mind, but he had never 'heard' anyone else before. The cry that had driven him to his knees was new and to his shock there was now someone else in the link. Before he could adjust to that new information another cry dropped him to the floor of the shaft. 

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As Julie stepped back, something began moving in the incision in Robin's belly. To the shock of everyone in the surgical room, another baby began to crawl out of Robin. This child too cried at the change of environment. This child was more Visitor than Human, although like his sister, he too had traits that showed his mixed heritage. His eyes were blue and Human, and his cry, while it was more of a hiss than a Human child's cry, did not reverberate as a Visitor's did, but his most prominent feature was his skin, which although it was as green as his father's, had no scales whatsoever.

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Mike was at his friend's side instantly, rolling Martin onto his back. Martin lay there gasping while Mike tried to figure out what was wrong. Martin waved him off, batting at the hands that were frantically searching for a wound. "I'm ok," he finally managed to gasp out.

"Bullshit!" Donovan growled.

Martin knew that there was no way he was going to get out of explaining this one. "Mike, I haven't been able to tell you too much about me in the time we've known each other," he said as he climbed swiftly to his feet. He gave his Human friend a gentle push in the direction they had been traveling. He did have a destination in mind. If they could get there in time, they just might get out of this situation alive. "Human pregnancies that produce twins are about 1 in 1,000 or so if the information that I have is correct. Visitor pregnancies that result in twins are more like 1 in 500,000 and those that produce living children 1 in every 1,000,000. Twins that are the result of a single zygote rather than two are only show up 1 in every 2,500,000 pregnancies. My brother and I are the result of one such pregnancy."

"The English term is identical twins," Mike supplied, wondering where Martin was going with this story, and what did the fact that Martin and his brother were twins have to do with what put Martin on the floor? "Fraternal twins are the result of two zygotes."

Martin nodded and continued. "There is no literature, medical or otherwise, that tells about the link between identical twins. My brother and I can feel each other's pain and emotions. We've never been able to 'hear' anyone else, but there has never been a case where one twin has become a parent to another set of twins," Martin paused, "not until now. Robin has just given birth to two children, my children. I can 'hear' them the same way I can 'hear' my brother."

"And that put you on the floor?" Mike demanded.

"Well I wasn't exactly expecting to 'hear' anyone other than my brother, and I certainly wasn't ready to 'hear' them cry at the top of their mental voices either!" Martin snapped. 

Mike had the grace to look abashed. He was a father. He knew that babies cried when they were born. It was one of the ways that you knew the baby was ok. "Where are we headed?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Here," Martin said as they reached the spot he had been headed for.

"Where's here?" Mike asked confused.

"This is where we get off," Martin said.

"Great, in what?" Mike asked.

"In these," Martin said and passed Mike a parachute.

"Are you joking? We're going to sky dive outa here?" Mike asked incredulous.

"That's right," Martin confirmed with a slight grin.

"Do you realize how many miles up we are?"

"As a matter of fact I do," Martin said calmly. He was enjoying this. He had never seen his friend so freaked out before.

"I got a better idea. Let's work our way back to the landing bay, steal a fighter and cruise home," Mike said as he put the pack aside to go back the way they had come.

"Get back here and put that on," Martin ordered. They put the parachutes on and Martin continued, "You know, I don't know why you're making such a fuss about this Donovan. In our service young cadets are required to do this in their very first weeks of training."

"All right, all right," Mike said, not wanting to hear it. "What do I do?"

"Just lower yourself over the edge. Force of air in the chute will take care of the rest. Now go!"

"Wait, cadets really do this?" Mike asked.

"No," Martin said from behind him. "Sounded good though," he said as he shoved Mike over the edge with his boot.

 

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Once on the ground Mike had to lead Martin to a safe place. Martin hadn't had time to grab his sunglasses and the light was far too bright for him to see. "Shit," he cussed as he was led blindly to the closest building to their landing spot. "This is the only thing I don't like about your planet. Damned sun is too bright," he muttered to himself. It wasn't something that the Visitors had advertised, seeing it as a weakness that could be exploited, but they had evolved as nocturnal predators on their homeworld. While they had no difficulty moving around in the daytime on either planet, the bright light of the Sol star was more than their eyes could handle without pain. Martin was walking around with one arm thrown over his eyes and the other hand latched tightly onto Donovan.

"Here we go," Mike said as he guided Martin inside. The building was blissfully dark to Martin's eyes. "We can stay here until dark. Then we have to figure out where to go from here." He didn't know where the new headquarters was, nor did he know anyone who did. They would have to go through a complicated chain of contacts before they could find that information.

"West, we need to go west," Martin muttered. He was exhausted. He really hadn't expected to survive and he didn't have the strength to explain that he could 'feel' where the babies were.

Mike lowered Martin to the floor and to his astonishment; the Visitor just curled up on the floor and went to sleep. "Guess you must be tired," he said softly. Well, Martin had saved his life. The least he could do would be to watch over him while he slept, even if Martin had tricked him in order to do it.


	13. Chapter 13

As soon as the sun set, Mike went out and found a van. After stealing it (Elias' lessons in boosting cars came in handy sometimes) he picked up Martin from where he was hiding. "Head west," Martin instructed from where he was sitting on the floor. They couldn't take the chance that he would be seen. His uniform was too distinctive and there would only be one couple of men fitting their description running around LA right now.

"Are you sure?" Mike asked.

"They're fussing. Whatever it is that your people are doing, my children don't like it." Martin didn't add that they were giving him a headache. It wasn't pertinent to their discussion and he was used to keeping such things to himself. He did wonder if his brother had heard the children too. It wasn't likely. He couldn't hear his brother unless he was in a certain amount of pain because they were so far away from each other.

"Babies always fuss," Mike reassured him. "It isn't like they can tell their caregivers any other way that they don't like what is happening to them."

"I understand but it does mean that I know where they are," Martin said. "Turn left here." With Martin giving the directions, it wasn't long before they found the new headquarters. Once there, Mike drove right up to the gate and was let in, although the people on guard duty were taking no chances, not after the security tape they had seen.

"Hey guys! Didja miss me?" Mike asked as he got out of the van. His Human voice relaxed the sentries, although Elias did come up to him with a switch blade.

"Sorry man, but we can't take the chance you know?" he said as he made a small cut on the back of Mike's hand. Visitor blood was green, while Human was red. That was the only concern they had. Mike hadn't been in Visitor custody long enough to be converted. 

"I know but my guest can't pass that test," Mike grinned as he took his hand back. "Martin had to come along this time." He went over and opened the van's side door. Martin got out immediately.

"Good to meet ya. Now how did you two find this place?" Elias wanted to know.

"They're very loud and I can't take it any longer," Martin snapped and started running towards the building. Elias and Mike followed while the rest of the sentries stayed at their post. They would find things out later.

"What's he talking about?" Elias wanted to know. He wasn't really happy when he noticed that Martin wasn't pausing for more than a second and that was more to get around people than to figure out which way he was going.

"Robin had twins, right?" Mike asked.

"How the hell did you know that?" Tyler snapped as he joined them in running after Martin.

By then they had reached the prison infirmary. Harmony was pacing outside in the hallway with the little baby girl. Martin ran up to her and took the bundled baby out of her arms. "You're not doing this right," he said as he took the baby back inside. Inside Willie too, was walking with a baby. "Give that one to me," Martin ordered. When Willie saw that no one was waving a gun around at Martin or anything of that nature, he complied. "Now where is their mother?" he demanded.

"She needs her rest and so do they," Julie said firmly. By this time half the resistance was following and wondering just what was going on.

Martin sighed. "You don't know how to deal with Visitor twins and these two are driving me nuts. Now where is she?" He was holding the twins carefully together against his chest while trying to unwrap them. 'Why in the world would they tie these children up with blankets like this? They couldn't move an inch!'

Confused, and hoping that Martin would soon make sense, Julie gestured to the recovery room where Robin was hopefully asleep. Martin walked in, not wanting to scare anyone while he had the children in his arms. "Robin?"

Robin hadn't been sleeping. The medication Julie had given her had worn off and she was too uncomfortable to sleep. She wasn't about to ask for more though. She knew exactly how much they had in the way of painkillers and she wasn't going to use something that would be needed by the fighters if she could help it. She looked up as Martin walked through the door, carrying the twins. "Martin? What are you doing here?" she asked.

Martin winked at her while he had his back to everyone else. They poured into the room behind him. "You had these two while I was getting Donovan off the mother ship. They put me on my knees when they were born and they've been crying ever since. They need to have skin contact with you, now," he insisted. Very carefully between the two of them they managed to get the babies unwrapped from their blankets and under the covers on Robin's naked chest. "They need to hear your heartbeat and they need physical contact with you and each other. Twins don't like to be apart."

"How is it that you know all of this when Willie didn't?" Julie asked. "And what do you mean they've been crying? They haven't made a sound." Nothing that Martin was doing was harmful in any way to any of her patients so she was willing to go along with him for now, and the children did seem to be settling down. No one had been able to get them to go to sleep.

"Visitor twins are rare, extremely so in some cases," Martin explained. "I am a twin, so I know more about them than other Visitors, and yes, they have been crying; very loudly I might add. Visitor twins have a mental link between them. I've been hearing them up here," he tapped the side of his head. "I've never been able to hear anyone other than my brother before. That's how Mike and I found your new headquarters. I just followed the children's crying."

"Just how rare are twins?" Tyler demanded. If Martin could 'hear' the twins mentally, then maybe someone else could too.

"Twins that hatch alive are about 1 in a 1,000,000. My brother and I are currently the only set of adult twins serving in the fleet and my brother Philip is on leave back on our homeworld." Martin sagged back against the wall next to the bed where Robin was holding their children. Kkkeesk/Philip was serving in the fleet's Inspector General's Office. Well, he had been at least until their father had declared war on the Leader. "Do they have names?" he asked Robin.

"The little girl is Elizabeth," Robin said nodding at the Human twin. "And the little boy is William," she said, nodding at the Visitor twin. "He's named after Willie." She waved a single finger at the only other Visitor in the room. Willie looked shocked at this revelation. "He really helped me through the last stages of my pregnancy. I went into convulsions once and he knew just what to do to take care of them." She had thanked Willie before for his help but she hadn't shared in her plans to name her child after him if it was a boy. She decided that since all of her family was in the same room together, she might as well take the next small step in getting them used to each other. "How's your arm?"

Martin startled. He hadn't even thought about his arm in months. "It's fine. I'm still not used to seeing your skin there though."

"That's probably because you have to wear those gloves all the time. I don't cover mine up, so I'm used to seeing your skin there now," Robin said matter of factly. "Now just how long am I going to have to keep this up? Because I may be on bed rest now, but I still have to get up and take care of some things." Martin instructed her on the care of twins while the resistance looked on.

Robert wasn't the only one who was startled at the information of just who had supplied the skin for the skin graft on Robin's arm. The fact that her skin had been grafted onto his arm came as a bit of a shock. No one had thought to ask where her own skin had gone. Robert was also a little surprised to realize that Robin was treating Martin like an old friend. 'It makes sense I suppose. She did spend time with him on the mother ship and he did rescue her.'

Julie was listening intently to the instructions that Martin was giving Robin. She was also putting two and two together and coming up with more than just 'a mental connection between twins'. If Martin was Elizabeth and William's father as well as a twin, then that made a lot more sense that he could 'hear' them than if there was no real connection between them. It also made sense that Robin was still refusing to name her children's father. She was protecting Martin. She would have to figure someway to send him away from the resistance headquarters. There was no way that any of them were ready for that particular confrontation.

Willie had known what the Battle Bride mark was and hadn't said anything to anyone about it. He was glad for Robin's sake that the Visitor she had been married to wasn't one of Diana's people. That group was scary. He was also very much aware of just who Martin was. Although he was only a technician in the fleet, his family wasn't that far removed from Martin's own in their own culture's class structure. He was a few years younger than the twins and his parent's had made certain that he knew everyone who needed to be known, both above and below his own station. He had been fascinated by the twins; as much for the fact that they had been developed from the same zygote as anything else, but the revelation that Martin was one of the twins also gave him a new respect for Ham Tyler. The man had actually survived being beaten. The twins were well known as masters of the Visitor's martial arts and two of the top most ranked fighters on the homeworld.


	14. Chapter 14

Martin was discussing the situation with Willie as they fed his son the next morning. Robin and Harmony were on the bed feeding Elizabeth while they sat in chairs next to the bed feeding William. They were speaking in their own language. Willie had been the one to make sure of that, explaining that his English was terrible and he could barely make himself understood. 

'I was supposed to go to the Middle East,' Willie said. It was a pleasure to finally be able to communicate without worrying about making himself understood. 'I learned Arabic but at the last minute my assignment was switched to here. Harmony says they "screwed" me. I have to agree although the mix up did have its own benefits. I suppose that somewhere in this city someone speaks that language but I haven't met anyone yet.'

Martin shook his head. 'English was hard enough for me to learn. I can't imagine learning two Human languages, much less learning one while tracking it.'

Willie agreed. 'It has been difficult. Sometimes I do not think that I will ever master it. I keep getting things mixed up. I'm just glad that Harmony can usually figure out what I mean.'

'You like her, don't you?' Martin said. He had wondered why those two seemed to be together most of the time. They had even watched the doorway for him so that he could see Robin alone last night. He hadn't been able to stay long. Robin had been tired and he hadn't wanted anyone to know he was there with her. He had met Robert and apparently things were getting better between the two of them now that the twins were born. He didn't want to disrupt that.

Willie ducked his head and if Martin could have seen his real face he would have sworn the other Visitor's crest was bright green. 'She is kind and gentle,' Willie muttered, focusing on the plate that held a butchered rabbit. To help out the resistance the children were raising rabbits for meat on grass and weeds. 'She doesn't mind my appearance nor does she hold the Leader's plans against me."

'She's a rare woman,' Martin agreed. 'At least you're going about courting her in the proper fashion. Robin had me chained to her before she knew what was happening.'

'I do not understand why it was done. I mean, the only one that I can think of who is unstable enough to do it in the first place is Diana. I was glad to find out that the poor girl wasn't given to one of her people but why would she want to do it in the first place?' It was something that had bewildered Willie for months now.

Martin smirked, 'I wouldn't sleep with her and I had a good enough excuse that managed to put her off for two years. Thank you for looking after Robin for me. I didn't think that Diana would make these two possible. When I sent Robin back to the resistance I had no idea that she was carrying my children.'

'Her neck was marked when I first met her,' Willie protested. In fact, Robin's neck still bore the strange blue/green mark all the way around, although it was beginning to fade at last.

'Humans don't have such a sign. In fact, in very rare cases I've heard that a female can even not know that she's pregnant until she gives birth!' That fact was astonishing to Martin, who was used to females whose neck showed the mark of pregnancy within hours after conception.

Robin shifted Elizabeth to her shoulder to burp her and noticed that Willie was staring at Martin in shock. "I wonder what that's all about?" she asked Harmony, nodding at their men.

"Oh I'm sure they'll let us know eventually," Harmony said as she raised her voice as a prod at the two.

The two men grinned sheepishly over at their ladies and changed the subject. 'I don't want to put Robin or the children in a bad position. Robin and her father seem to be reconciling. I knew that they were at odds with each other. She said that she wasn't talking to him, but it seems to me that it is too soon to add me into the mix. Does he still hate our people mindlessly?' Martin asked. William was done with his rabbit now and wanted to play. He wondered how parents who couldn't tell coped with their children.

'Not now, but he did. He is getting better at realizing that not all of us follow the Leader and his evil willingly or blindly, but still you are correct; it is too soon for him to learn that his eldest daughter is your Battle Bride.' was Willie's analysis of the situation.

Martin nodded and sighed. 'I'll have to leave today.' He didn't want to leave but the facts of the matter spoke for themselves. If he didn't show up within 48 hours at his apartment then Barbara would take over the Fifth Column thinking that he was dead. He just couldn't do that to his second and friend. 

Willie pulled out his glasses and handed them to Martin. When Martin took them looking surprised, he shrugged. 'They don't let me out much around here,' he said depreciatively. It wasn't like they didn't have good reason to keep him restricted. Willie had never been a Fifth Columnist. He had been captured by Elias and his father when he was on a date with Harmony. Although by now the resistance members all knew that Willie was actually quite happy with the situation, everyone knew it was far better to keep their willing prisoner under wraps.

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Elizabeth Maxwell was seven days old the first time she showed just how different she was from other children. It wasn't the Visitor's tongue or venom pouches that showed so obviously when she yawned widely. It was the fact that she had shed her skin and was now the size of a Human two year old. According to Willie, Visitor children didn't shed their skin until they were six years old and at that time the changes were not so obvious. As far as Julie could tell, she was perfectly fine. The same could not be said about her brother.

It hadn’t taken long to for everyone who was involved in his care to realize that there was something wrong with little William. William for some reason was getting weaker and weaker. They had done all that they could do to build his strength, even going so far as to get him animals from the Visitors homeworld to eat, but nothing that Julie or Willie could come up with helped the little boy. When he was seven days old William Maxwell, son of Robin Maxwell and the Visitor known as Martin, died.

At the moment he died, Elizabeth screamed for only the second time in her short life. Her mother and the others did their best to console her but there was nothing that anyone could do. Her twin was gone and nothing could bring him back. On the other side of the city, Martin once more fell to his knees, this time from both the wrench of his son's death and from his daughter's scream. After a moment of shock and dismay he 'reached' out to Elizabeth to soothe her fright. There was nothing else that he could do.

"Sir?" Lorraine asked as she helped Martin up off the floor. 

"I'm alright," he said as he sat down behind the cheap desk. The apartment wasn't much more than a single room hole in the wall, one of the places that barely qualified as habitable by Human standards, but all Martin had to pay was the rent and that had been paid with money taken from the personal belongings from those packed away on the mother ship. He had all the food he could eat in the form of the rats that lived in the building and he needed nothing else. All of his time was spent directing the Fifth Column and doing what he could to end this stupid war. "I'm alright, Lorraine," he repeated. "Now are you sure that Josh is right about the members of his squad?" While half of his attention was on what he was doing, the rest was taken up with Elizabeth. He couldn't imagine what she was going through, and even worse, all he could do was mentally hold her hand.

Lorraine eyed her superior officer suspiciously. He still wore his uniform and most of the body suit that made him appear Human. He looked a little shaken but alright. She glanced at his naked arms and hands. His color was good as far as she could see. 

Martin had removed that portion of his body suit for a simple reason. More and more of the recruits for the Fifth Column were because of the war back home than because what they were doing to the Humans was wrong. Martin had a choice. He could either use the fact that Robin was his Battle Bride, thus winning more support for his cause, or he could hide it. He had no desire to hide it. He wasn't ashamed of Robin anymore than she was of him. The only reason that she hadn't told anyone was to protect him from her father, and she had told him outright that she was trying to ease her father into the knowledge. She had gotten a promise from him that he wouldn't try to kill Martin out of hand. Personally that was more than he had expected the Human to ever agree to.

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Robert had called Julie and Robin into the lab. "Did you find out what killed William?" Robin asked quietly. If it hadn't been for Elizabeth, she'd have been devastated by the loss of her son. As it was, she concentrated on Elizabeth and doing her best to learn how to shoot. She fully intended to go with Mike when he went to meet Martin again. It was the only way she had to learn what was going on in Elizabeth's mind. She had to know that to be able to help her daughter. She hadn't been able to train or take part in the raids before because she was pregnant but she was determined that she would not be helpless. Not like she was when she was captured. She wasn't going to let that happen again.

"Yes and Robin, it wasn't because of something going wrong with his body. His blood was swarming with bacteria. He died of an infection. I checked Elizabeth and she has the same bacteria in her but she seems to be immune. Here take a look," Robert gestured to Julie. Julie looked into the microscope. Robert led her through the sample of William's blood, one of Willie's and a normal sample from a Human. The bacteria seemed to be a hybrid of two normal bacteria that lived in the intestinal tracts of Humans and Visitors.

It was Robin who asked the important question. "Elizabeth is more Human than Visitor. William was more Visitor than Human. Does that mean that this bacteria will kill Visitors but not Humans?"

"Maybe," Robert nodded cautiously.

"We need to run more tests," Julie told them both, but her eyes were gleaming.


End file.
